


It's your world we live in

by Apuzzlingprince



Series: IT Fanfics [11]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Abduction, Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Human, Anal Sex, Bad Parents Zack & Sharon Denbrough, Bill Whump, Cannibalism, Corporal Punishment, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, Human Pennywise (IT), Kidnapping, M/M, Oral Sex, Psychological Torture, Restraints, Serial Killers, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-11 07:30:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15967622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apuzzlingprince/pseuds/Apuzzlingprince
Summary: And that duffel bag…it’s big enough to fit a kid, his mind informed him, and he swallowed hard, sinking deeper into the grass he was hidden within. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but he couldn’t shake the peculiarity of someone with money, and a car, and most likely a home voluntarily entering the Neibolt house. And with a duffel bag no less, as though they had been living in there. Could they have entered on a dare? Perhaps, but they were dressed rather well for someone who would take on such dares, and Bill assumed there would have been friends waiting for him outside had that been the case. Maybe they had inherited the house and wanted to refurbish it? Possible, but considering the state of the place, that didn't seem likely. Whatever he had packed into that duffel bag couldn't be enough to fix the problems the Neibolt house had.Bill watched him descend the porch steps and head out into the street. As this was the only house on the street, the man didn’t have to worry about being seen exiting the Neibolt house. Not by anyone other than Bill, in any case.Bill starts following a man by the name of Robert Gray. It does not end well.





	1. Click

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, some in depth warnings, because this is quite a dark fic.
> 
> WARNING: First, there is torture in this fic. Isolation based torture, physiological torture, and physical torture. There is also non-con and a lot of shame and self-hatred associated with that. Robert force feeds Bill at several points. Sometimes he treats Bill like a dog. There is, obviously, child death and cannibalism. There's just of unpleasantness going on! So tread carefully!

_And in the doughy face days end_  
_Once I have licked your plate clean_  
_You mutter on about infinity_  
_I'm gonna show you what it means_

\- The Paper Chase

* * *

 

It was the date, more so than anything else, that stuck in Bill's mind. October twelfth, nineteen eighty-eight. The day Georgie went missing.

(The day Georgie died.)

He certainly remembered the chill of a rainy winter, the congestion he’d been suffering, the sound of his mother playing the piano downstairs, but it was the date that rose to the forefront of his mind when he thought of Georgie.

The date was important because it enabled Bill to know exactly how long Georgie had been missing, right down to the hour. Currently, it was at three hundred and eighty-six days and seven hours. A year and twenty-one days, but Bill didn’t look at the passage of time in years. How long Georgie had been gone felt longer – too long – if he went by years instead of days.

Not a single one of those three hundred and eighty-six days had passed without him thinking of Georgie. Even if he had wanted to, it was impossible to ignore Georgie’s absence when one stepped foot into the Denbrough household. The place stagnated without him. It had turned quiet and cold in the weeks following his disappearance and it had remained that way. The cold was almost a live thing, squeezing around Bill’s lungs every time he entered his house, and he feared one day it would choke the life out of him just like it had his parents.

He slept over his friends' houses as much as he could to avoid that cold. His mother and father had become lethargic with their parenting and didn’t care that Bill was rarely at home, provided he at least joined them for the odd dinner. There were times Bill wondered if they even remembered that they had another son. It hurt, but there was a convenience to having negligent parents: their apathy meant he could go anywhere he wanted without worrying about them fussing over him. He needed that kind of freedom if he was to find Georgie.

The task of finding Georgie filled his days. He thought about it from the moment he woke, to the moment he went to bed. Sometimes it even invaded his dreams and he would find his cheeks wet come morning. Being unable to give his full focus to anything else had led him to falling behind in school. His parents received letters about his falling grades, truancy, and his tendency to get into fights during lunch period (always with those who spoke ill of Georgie, which had become a pastime for the Bowers gang), and they initially tried to talk to Bill about these developments, tried to convince him to go into therapy, but it was a token effort; the moment Bill put up even the slightest hint of resistance, they gave up. The letters continued to come, piling up on the kitchen counter along with the junk mail. Once the pile started to disturb their daily activities, his parents swept them into the trash: out of sight, out of mind. 

Even if he had wanted his mothers and fathers understanding, he didn't dare explain to them that it was Georgie making him struggle so. They had thrown a fit the last time he had attempted to broach the topic of finding Georgie, and the way his father had looked at him, with something bordering on hatred, had scared him. It would have been easier to find Georgie had his folks been involved, but they had given up on ever getting Georgie back long ago. Bill had no choice but to manage without them.

He found reassurance and motivation in reading stories about people being found years after disappearing. Such events were rare, but they  _did_ happen. Bodies naturally didn't show up in these stories, and Bill thought that surely, if Georgie had been killed, they would have found the body by now. They would have found _something_. He was so sure that Georgie was still out there after reading these stories that he would become hot and shaky with determination. Georgie _was_ out there, he would tell himself, and he would find him. His parents might have given up, the police might have given up, and the rest of Derry might have given up, but Bill wouldn't stop until Georgie was home.

That said, he hadn’t gotten far with his investigation. He had determined that Georgie would have ended up in the barrens had he fallen into the gutter, but that was all. It was pitiful progress and thus far had proven highly useless. He had tried on several occasions to find some sign of Georgie in the barrens by creeping through the pipes with his friends, but he always went home empty handed. If he could just find a boot, maybe Georgie’s slicker… at the very least, that would have given Bill a better idea of where he should be looking.

It was hard not to get disheartened. He had to fight against the urge to cry each time his ventures into the underbelly of Derry failed to turn up anything. As a teenager, he was much too old to be crying, but he could not pretend he didn't get glassy eyed each time he slipped into bed knowing the tally of days since Georgie’s death had increased by one more.

His friends tried to help him. They offered him encouragement and comfort and accompanied him on his searches. All very heartening, though Bill could tell they weren’t nearly as invested in finding Georgie as he was. He didn't blame them for that. They were all only kids, after all. This wasn’t the sort of thing normal kids would concern themselves with. It was scary, and gross, and upsetting, and that made Bill feel bad about bringing them along. Sometimes, though, they  _insisted_ on going places with him, so what could he do? He didn’t want to turn away the help. He was desperate for it and desperate for the company it came with. He hated it when he had to do things alone. Being alone reminded him all too much about how drastically his life had changed since Georgie’s death.

Other kids disappeared some time after Georgie. Their flyers covered Georgie’s, slapped up over power poles and community notice boards and on walls. Bill put up new posters of Georgie every month, but he knew by now that they did little to help. People never looked at them. They strode past, resolutely diverting their gaze, comfortable in their ignorance. No one wanted to help. No one wanted to deal with other people’s problems, and eventually those posters would be washed away by the rain and the residents of Derry would forget there had ever been any missing kids at all.

By Bill’s seventeenth birthday, a total of four kids had gone missing. Georgie had been the first. Some were presumed dead, while others, such as Patrick Hockstetter, were said to have left town now that they were old enough to do so without having to worry about their parents dragging them home. Each time a new disappearance came up, Bill was sure he would finally find some clue as to Georgie's whereabouts. He would go to the scene of the disappearance and troll for hours for evidence, using investigative techniques he had learned from library books, and... he always found nothing. Not a damn thing. Whoever was taking these children was  _good_ at what they did.

It was through sheer dumb luck that he eventually found a lead.

While riding past Neibolt house to get to school from the Hanlon farm, he’d heard a loud, reverberating thump from inside. It had given him pause – or rather, it had frightened him into falling completely still, like a deer in headlights. There were many tales circulating about the Neibolt house. Some believed it to be haunted, while others claimed tweakers and the homeless shacked up there. Bill had never believed any of it, thinking the place abandoned and nothing more, but he was certainly starting to wonder now. He stared at the house for a long time, listening hard, and had started to convince himself he’d imagined the sound when he heard a series of smaller, softer thumps from within.

It could have just been an animal, he knew, but his heart raced with a potent mix of anxiety and excitement nonetheless. He threw his legs over the side of his bike and considered leaving it on the sidewalk to facilitate a quick escape, but ultimately decided to hide Silver in a nearby bush. Assuming someone was in there, he didn’t want to risk them seeing it and realising a kid had intruded on the property.

It was more his curiosity than anything else that compelled him closer to the house. He had gotten good at sneaking, it being something he’d done periodically in order to invade ribboned off crime scenes, and he utilised his silent footsteps to bring himself right up to a boarded-up window. It took him a good minute to find a hole big enough to peer into, and he squinted hard through the dark cloaking the interior of the house, expecting to see perhaps a cat or a squirrel, but hoping for something more – not because he assumed this to be a lead on Georgie’s case, but because the idea of being able to tell his friends about the crackhead he’d seen in Neibolt house excited him. It’d been a long time since he’d had anything interesting or fun to tell his friends. They probably got bored of his spiels about Georgie.

He came so close to the window that his narrow nose brushed the glass. His breaths disturbed the dust there and some of it floated into his eyes, which immediately teared up. He did not, however, drag his gaze away. He stared into the dark, and it was after several seconds of this that he realised he was looking at the outline of a shadow. It was barely perceivable, but it was there. Someone was doing something at a kitchen counter. Bill licked his lips and tried to adjust his position so he could better see whoever it was, but his moving did little to expand his sight. The hole was too small. He needed to find a bigger one.

With his breath held, he crept his way across the porch and down some decrepit stairs, careful not to step on the ones that looked about ready to collapse on him. He didn’t find any windows at the side of the house, nor did he find an entrance at the back, which seemed odd. With no other means of watching his quarry, he decided to hunch down in the grass, hiding himself from view as he listened to the activity within the dilapidated house.

He put his ear to the wood. The walls were thin enough that he could just about make out the sound of someone moving within. Perhaps they were shooting up, or perhaps they were trying to cook themselves something to eat with the appliances offered by the place. Bill hadn’t been inside Neibolt before, too frightened of the prospect of it collapsing while he was in there, but he couldn’t imagine there were many items within the house that remained functional. Though, if one was homeless, he supposed anything would be better than nothing.

The minutes ticked along. He was going to be late for school. Very, very late, but this was far from the first time Bill had been tardy and would in fact be the fifth time he’d been tardy this month alone. He wasn’t worried. His friends had become good at covering for him.

It took fifteen minutes for the man to emerge. Bill watched him from the side of the house, and he wasn’t at all what Bill had been expecting. A tall, bright-eyed man with a sweep of ginger hair stepped out onto the porch, brushing down the shirt and slacks he was wearing with one hand, the other curled around the strap of a duffel bag. He was young, in his late twenties at the latest, and he was most definitely not homeless. Bill's confusion only grew as the man withdrew keys from his pocket, indicating that he had a car. There had been no cars on the street. He must have parked it far away, out of sight, just like Bill had done his bike.

Why would anyone do that?

And that duffel bag… _it’s big enough to fit a kid_ , his mind informed him, and he swallowed hard, sinking deeper into the grass he was hidden within. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but he couldn’t shake the peculiarity of someone with money, and a car, and most likely a home voluntarily entering the Neibolt house. And with a duffel bag no less, as though they had been _living_ in there. Could they have entered on a dare? Perhaps, but they were dressed rather well for someone who would take on such dares, and Bill assumed there would have been friends waiting for him outside had that been the case. Maybe they had inherited the house and wanted to refurbish it? Possible, but considering the state of the place, that didn't seem likely. Whatever he had packed into that duffel bag couldn't be enough to fix the problems the Neibolt house had.

Bill watched him descend the porch steps and head out into the street. As this was the only house on the street, the man didn’t have to worry about being seen exiting the Neibolt house. Not by anyone other than Bill, in any case.

He crept along after the man, keeping low so he could remain hidden for as long as possible. Once the man was half-way down the street, he sped across to where his bike was hidden and tore it from the bushes, sliding on as he guided it back onto the asphalt. By the time he managed to catch up with the man, they had turned into a dirt path and were speed-walking their way toward a black Bentley. It was confirmed to be their car when they popped the trunk and threw their bag inside. Bill watched the man from the street and only began moving when he heard the engine roar with life. He quickly started peddling away from the dirt road so to make it seem like he was riding to school, albeit much later than he should be.

The car entered the street. He spared a glance at the driver and the driver looked back, their eyes connecting just briefly before the man sped his way around a nearby corner, disappearing from sight. All the tension drained from Bill the moment he was alone. He exhaled deeply, letting his forehead drop to the handlebars of his bike while he caught his breath. It had taken some rigorous riding to reach the end of the street before the car exited the dirt path.

Bill considered returning to Neibolt to see just what the man was up to, but he decided against it; if his hunch was right and the man was indeed dangerous, he didn’t want to be found inside, nor leave any signs of him having been there. He’d read enough crime novels by now to know how perceptive and clever criminals could be. And besides, he didn’t even know yet if this man had done anything. It would be rude to impede on his privacy without a good reason to do so.

He headed to school. He had a lot he needed to tell his friends.

* * *

It took great self-control not to blurt out what he had seen to his friends (or Richie, rather, who was the one he shared most classes with) while class was in session. It would have been a bad idea for a multitude of reasons, and likely would have led to him getting a detention, so he held his tongue to the best of his ability, squirming in his chair until lunch arrived. He and the Losers had just barely entered their usual haunt – the stairs to the home economics room, always abandoned at this time of day – when Bill informed them in a rush of words of what he’d seen.

“There was s-someone in Neibolt house!”

That piqued all six of his friends’ curiosity.  

“More details, Bill!” demanded Richie, seating himself beside Bill and folding his arms over his knees. “Were they a homeless crackhead? They were, weren’t they.”

“Even a homeless crackhead wouldn’t want to live in there,” muttered Mike.

Bill raised a hand to compel silence. It worked, for the most part, though Eddie continued to mutter quietly to himself while sorting through his fanny pack of pills, apparently set off by the discussion of something as distressing as a ‘homeless crackhead’.

“N-nope," he said. "They h-had a car and everything." He winced at each stammer. Therapy had done wonders in dealing with his speech impediment, but he still had a long way to go before his voice was completely devoid of inflection. He always tended to stammer more while excited or distressed. “I’ve never suh-s-seen them around town,” he went on. “They were ginger and looked pretty young, like maybe t-twenty-eight or something, and they drove a Bentley.”

“Don’t ring any bells,” murmured Beverly, leaning her chin on her hand. “Or, well, it does, but too many bells. There’s a lot of people who fit that description. That basically sounds like my cousin, except I don’t know what car he drives.”

“You should’ve taken pictures,” said Ben, nodding along with Beverly’s words.

That was actually a good idea. He needed to invest in a camera.

“Well, he was pretty tall too, if that helps,” he added, glancing around his group of friends and finding not a hint of recognition on any of their faces. He sighed and slumped back, head dropping to Richie’s shoulder.

“Why does it matter, anyway?” asked Eddie, sounding nervous as always. “You shouldn’t go there. To Neibolt, I mean. Everything’s rusted. Do you know what tetanus is? If- if you step on a nail or something, you could end up having a seizure and dying, and that’s not even mentioning the needles the tweakers use that’re probably lying around all over the place! You can get hepatitis from those!”

“I didn't go inside,” said Bill, more to soothe Eddie than anything else. He didn't actually much care about the potential of getting tetanus. “D-don’t intend to, either. Not without reason anyway. It’s a sh-shit hole. Don’t want to go in there unless I h-have to.”

“Good,” said Eddie, audibly relieved. “I can’t even stand walking past that place. It gives me the creeps.”

“Everything gives you the creeps,” said Richie, snorting and elbowing him. Eddie scowled and slapped him away.

“I’ll get some p-photos of him,” Bill promised. “Then we can figure out who he is and-“

“And what?” asked Mike. “Even if we have photos, why do you want to follow this guy around?”

Everyone exchanged awkward glances.

“Oh, right,” said Richie quietly. “You weren’t around when Bill’s brother went missing. We used to talk about it a lot more, what might have happened to him, how we would get him back." He shrugs a shoulder. "We’ve been looking for him these past few years.”

“You're _still_ looking for him? But it’s been ages since…” Mike fell abruptly silent when he saw Bill’s face, which had turned suddenly morose. “I mean, I don’t mind looking for him, but some guy going into Neibolt house isn’t a great lead. He might just want to fix the place up and sell it or something.”

“Fix that place up?” Richie snorted in disbelief. The other Losers seemed to agree with the sentiment. “That place is way too fucked to be fixed. You’d have to knock it down and build a copy.”

“He was carrying a duffel bag,” Bill announced, and all eyes returned to him.

“Okay, _that’s_ weird,” said Beverly.

“Maybe he was...” Richie threw up his hands in a demonstration of confusion. “I dunno, golfing or something?”

“Yeah, bet there’s so many h-holes in that house it could pass as a golf course,” said Bill dryly. Richie cast him a sheepish smile.

“I got no ideas, then,” said Richie. “But I know what you think he had in there.”

“A body,” said Mike with a shiver, swiping a hand through his black curls.

A very short, solemn silence fell over the group, and it was only broken by Richie letting out a whooping sound that prompted everyone to jump.

“This is lunch!” Richie reached into his lunch bag and dug out a handful of Jolly Ranches, pelting them at his friends one at a time, who laughed and flapped their hand in a feeble attempt at defence. “We should be enjoying ourselves! Jesus. Lighten the fuck up, guys!”

Bill couldn’t find it within himself to argue as their group dissolved into laughter and began their retaliation, pelting the Jolly Ranches right back at Richie.

They were all only teenagers, he reminded himself. Bill knew he couldn’t expect them to put their lives on pause every time he needed their help. He’d already asked a lot of them over the years and perhaps this, scoping out his current lead, was something he should do on his own. He could seek their help in identifying the man visiting Neibolt house, but from there, it was probably best that he proceeded without them. Should the man prove dangerous, he didn’t want to inadvertently put his friends in their war path anyway. Too many kids had already gone missing in Derry.

He gathered all the apple Jolly Ranchers from the steps and had managed to stuff three into his mouth before Richie caught on to what he was doing and leapt upon him, attempting to wrench the rest out of his hands. Neither Georgie nor the man were brought up again over the rest of lunch. Richie had been right: Lunch was a time to enjoy oneself, and Bill wouldn’t be the one to deprive his friends of that.

Bill didn’t walk home with his friends. The moment the bell rang, he sped to the bike rack, retrieved Silver, and began to peddle home. He wanted to get there before his parents so he could make preparations for his investigation. They both got off work at four thirty and there would be hell to pay if his mother or father walked in on him gathering all the newspaper clippings, missing posters, photos, and maps he’d gathered over the years in his efforts to solve Georgie's case. The sight of them would probably send his mother and father into a rage, or a panic attack – perhaps both, and his items would be confiscated and thrown away, just like his map had been when he’d explained to his father that Georgie had to have ended up in the barrens.

Once at his house, he dug the spare key out from under a garden gnome, wiped it off on his jeans, and let himself inside. He made a beeline for his bedroom. The house was completely silent save for the groan of floorboards, and while this might have unnerved most people, Bill was used to it. His parents were more like ghosts than people these days and sometimes Bill only knew they were home by the creak of their footsteps.

His mother had once filled the parlour room with music during the evenings. Now the only thing the piano did was gather dust.

Bill entered his bedroom and reached beneath his bed, pulling out a blue, polka-dotted piggy bank Richie had given him on his tenth birthday. He hadn’t touched any of the money inside in years. He had intended to use his funds on a Game Boy Colour and every available Pokémon game, but finding Georgie took precedence. Richie would just have to find someone else to trade with. Maybe Stan, who wasn’t a huge fan of Pokemon, but who did play his Pokemon red on occasion.

He carefully counted out every coin and note. In total, he had four hundred and ninety-four dollars. That would be more than enough to buy him a quality camera and some film. He scooped everything into a zip lock bag and stowed it in his school bag, then proceeded to gather his newspaper clippings and missing posters and such and lock them in his lunchbox. With everything he needed now on hand, he left, grabbing himself an apple from the kitchen on his way out the door.

He peddled his way to the main street and to one of the many electronics stores, where he discarded his bike without bothering to chain it up. It wasn’t likely anyone would want to steal it. It was old, rusted, and scuffed up, looking every part a bike that had been owned by a child. While Bill wasn’t a child anymore, he hadn’t bothered to fix any of the blemishes. He didn’t see the point.

The shopkeeper greeted him as he entered. He offered them a flittering smile and made his way over to the cameras, which he examined at length. Bill could not profess to have a great knowledge of cameras, but he _had_ done a project on photography for art class, so he had a vague idea of what he was looking for.

There weren’t many in his price range. None of the digital cameras, most certainly. He would have to get a Polaroid, but that was just fine by him. Instant photos were better than having to wait to develop them. He selected a camera that was just under two hundred dollars and grabbed five lots of film, taking his items over to the counter. The shopkeepers face fell as he withdrew his baggie of money.

“Sorry,” said Bill, casting the shopkeeper a sympathetic look and reaching into his baggie to start counting out the money.

He had a fair few notes in there as well, fortunately. At least half of the payment was made in notes, while the rest was given in coins. The shopkeeper looked none too pleased with him once the purchase was done and he made a hasty escape, heading for an arts and crafts store across the street.

With what money he had left, he bought himself a pin board, pins, nails, and some twine. Everything he needed to start a collage of information. It took some fiddling to get the pin board attached to his bike, but with some of the twine, he managed to secure it to his handlebars. The only problem was that it disabled his ability to peddle fast, so the journey to the barrens and to the underground clubhouse he and his friends had built there was a very slow one.

The Losers didn’t hang out there anymore, and nor did anyone else. The place had become overgrown with trees and flora. It was the perfect place to set up his investigation.

For a room built by a bunch of teenagers, the clubhouse was surprisingly durable. It had lasted much longer than any of them had anticipated, persevering through floods and fires and forest growth. Bill only had to clean out some dirt that had slipped in through the hatch before dropping inside and turning on the battery powered light bulb they had installed on the ceiling.

It was smaller than Bill remembered, a little claustrophobic, but still large enough to fit each of the Losers twice over. He was taller now, much taller than he had been at eleven, and his head brushed the ceiling. That wouldn’t be a problem, seeing as he would be spending most of his time in the clubhouse sitting.

He dropped his bag into a corner and retrieved the pin board, which he nailed into the back-most wall. They had reinforced the clubhouse with metal sheets pilfered from the junkyard, as well as an additional layer of wood, so he didn’t have to worry about nailing through to dirt. With that suspended, he started pinning up the information he had compiled, creating for himself a map of everything that had happened over the past four years. He used the twine to connect relevant information and dug a marker out of his bag to make the occasional note. The end result looked a little chaotic and indecipherable, but _Bill_ understood it, and that was what mattered.

“Okay,” he mumbled to himself, retrieving his polaroid camera from his bag. “Time to get some photos.”

* * *

Whatever the man did in Neibolt house, he didn’t do it as regularly as would have been convenient for Bill. It was only on his _fifth_ stakeout at Neibolt, on a cool, cloudy weekend morning, that the man finally made an appearance. 

Just as before, he parked his Bentley out of sight and entered with a duffel bag. Bill snapped three photos of him as he ascended the porch steps, then skittered into the yard to take one more before the man stepped out of sight. He just barely managed to snap a photo of his face.

The man remained inside the house for three hours. When he emerged, his duffel bag appeared lighter, no longer weighing down his shoulder. Bill took a photo and then hurried back to his bike so he could follow the man to his next destination.

Riding after a Bentley without being seen proved difficult. He would swerve behind trees and hide himself among pedestrians whenever possible, but there was a good chance the man saw him at least once or twice. If he did, however, he gave no indication of that. He pulled up at an apartment complex and headed inside, and Bill dropped his bike unceremoniously into a nearby bush and sped through the doors after him. While the receptionist was distracted by the recent arrival, Bill crept up some stairs and dropped to his haunches, listening to the ensuing conversation.

“How’s your day been, Robert? Busy?”

“No more than usual,” said Robert, his voice soft and friendly.

“Well, that’s good. At least one of us is getting rest.” A sigh. “Here’s your mail.”

“Thanks, Janice.” Bill could almost hear the smile in his voice. “Try to get some proper sleep tonight. See you later.”

“See you, Robert.”

Bill heard a click as Robert called the elevator. He raced back down the stairs and reached the bottom just in time to watch the numbers flick to the appropriate floor.

One, Two, Three, Four… Five!

“Honey,” began the receptionist, but Bill ignored her, leaping his way back up the stairs and heading for the fifth floor as fast as his legs would carry him. In his haste to reach his destination, he nearly went barrelling into the fifth floor hallway. Fortunately the final step was there to catch him by his toes. He went stumbling into the stair railing instead, and as he righted himself, he spotted Robert walking down the hallway towards him. Bill managed to snap a quick photo of him before hunching down into safety, his heart thudding wildly in his chest while he waited for the telltale sound of Robert entering his apartment.  

Click. Snap.

Silence.

Bill pressed a heavy breath out through clenched teeth. His hands had begun to tremble. He let the camera drop to his clavicle and gave them a rough shake, forcing the tremor out of them before entering the hallway Robert had just been in.

His room number was three hundred and two. Bill snapped a photo of that too before leaving the building. He managed to sneak into the garage and grab a few photos of Robert's car as well, paying particular attention to his license plates and the information he had stuck to the windshield.

He considered asking the receptionist for Robert’s surname, but – no, he couldn’t risk her informing Robert that someone had been looking for him, particularly as Bill was well-known by the residents of Derry.

He left the premises and went straight for the clubhouse, where he proceeded to pin up the photos he had taken, tacking on a note that the man’s name was ‘Robert’. Once he found out his surname, he would add that too. A surname would make it much easier to get more information on the man.

* * *

“So, do you know him?”

Beverly stared hard at the photo before shaking her head. She passed it on to Mike, who did the same thing, and then Eddie, who cast Bill an apologetic look.

“His names R-Robert,” he added, hoping that this would be enough to spur some memories. “Really? No one knows who he is?”

When the photo reached Ben, his brows shot up. “That’s Pennywise.”

There came a chorus of _what’_ s and _who_ ’s from the rest of the gathering, to which Ben gave a nervous chuckle.

“You know, Pennywise the, um… the dancing clown. He attends parties.” Ben rubbed at his face with a palm, trying and failing to scrub away the red developing on his cheeks. “My mom wanted to get him for my thirteenth birthday, but I didn’t really have… you know, friends at the time.” He shrugged. “Not a big loss. Thirteen is too old for a clown, anyway.”

Richie gave a full-body shudder. “Augh, I _hate_ clowns! I didn’t even know we had one here. Creepy.”

“Clowns aren’t that bad,” murmured Mike, taking the photograph from Ben to get a look himself. Once he was done, he handed it to Stan. “Huh. He kinda looks like the type of guy who’d be a clown, doesn’t he?”

“A creepy clown, maybe,” said Stan.

“Pennywise…” Bill thought that to be an unsettling name for a clown. Why not Buttons or Chuckles? Those were significantly more inviting. “I’ll- I’ll find one of his advertisements,” he decided, retrieving the photo from Stan and stuffing it back into a pocket. He intended to return it to the pin board tonight. “That’ll give me a surname and I can go from there.”

“Do you need us to do anything?” asked Eddie with some reproach. He was clearly repelled by the idea of following such an individual, but he wanted to help Bill nonetheless. Bill smiled in gratitude.

“Nah, it’s okay.” He shrugged a shoulder, trying for nonchalance. “I’m just checking him out. He’s probably not dangerous. The guy plays a clown, after all.”

“If you ask me, that just makes him more suspect,” said Richie.

“Just because you’re piss scared of clowns doesn’t mean they’re all bad, Tozier,” said Bill, giving him a playful elbow. Richie elbowed him right back, grinning.

Now that Bill had a profession to go by, he was able to dig out Robert’s full name from an advertisement posted on a supermarket community board. It bore a picture of Robert in makeup, his hair sticking up in all directions, his face caked white and lips painted bright red. Bill had to admit that this particular clown gave legitimacy to Richie’s fear of them. This was certainly not the sort of clown he would have wanted at _his_ birthday party.

He took the entire advertisement to add to his pin board. When another copy was put up, he took that too, bringing it home to show his parents. As Zack Denbrough was employed as an electrician at Bangor Hydroelectric, which had hundreds of employees, there was a chance he might have heard of this ‘Pennywise’ from one of his co-workers. 

As luck should have it, he had, though he gave Bill a very short answer when Bill asked after the man.

“He arrived a few years ago. Not much more to say than that, Bill,” said Zack, lounging on the settee with his dinner in his lap. They very rarely ate at the table these days. “And if you want him for your upcoming birthday, forget about it. You’re too old for clowns.”

“Did he arrive b-before or after, um…” He couldn’t mention Georgie. Just his name elicited terrible things in his father. “My thirteenth birthday?”

“Before,” said Zack, arching an eyebrow at him. “Why? Did you want him back then? I don’t think he was advertising at that time, so even if you did-“

“No, no,” said Bill quickly. “I was just c-curious. I didn’t know we hu-h-had a clown in town until now.”

Zach offered no further comments. After standing there awkwardly for several seconds, awaiting a reply, Bill turned and left, headed upstairs to his bedroom.

So Robert Gray had arrived just in time to be present for Georgie’s disappearance, as well as a multitude of other kids’ disappearances. That couldn’t be coincidental, and that he worked in a profession that gave him access to kids made him all the more suspect. For the first time in years, Bill truly felt he was making traction on Georgie's case. His relief and excitement could not have been greater.

Finally, _finally_ , he was going to see his little brother again.

Growing older meant Bill knew, deep down, that Georgie probably wasn’t alive anymore, but at this point, any hint of what had happened to him would have come as a relief. They could have a proper funeral. Closure. And if he was still alive, kept hostage by this Robert Gray all these years, Bill would never let Georgie out of his sight again. _Never_.

If he wanted this investigation to go anywhere, Bill knew he would need to find evidence. With evidence, he could go to the police, re-open Georgie’s case, and finally Derry would be free of the scourge that was Robert Gray (presumably; innocent until proven guilty and all that, but Bill was so _certain_. His guts were crying out that Gray was trouble, and it had been said that one should trust their guts.)

Once Georgie was back or buried, things could finally go back to normal. The remaining Denbrough's could move on. He was as excited for that as he was the prospect of finding Georgie, which made him feel somewhat guilty, but he missed the attentive, loving parents his mother and father used to be. He was desperate for parental affection. He wanted the warmth to return to the Denbrough household and finally that possibility was within his grasp.

He managed only a fitful slumber that night. He found it impossible to rest while there were so many plans bubbling at the surface of his mind.

_Follow him and catch him doing something incriminating._

_Sneak into Neibolt, take photos of whatever he’s hiding there._

_Steal that duffel bag from his trunk._

He found himself thinking about how he would enact each one of these plans in the early hours of the morning. Needless to say, he was dragging his heels when it came time for him to get ready for school. On any other day, he would have feigned illness, stayed in. Today, however, he was too excited to put one of his plans into motion to stay in bed.

The only thing he intended to do at school today was prepare. He had a notepad and several pens ready. His education would, and had suffered for his fixation on Georgie’s disappearance, but there would be time to play catch up later; finding Georgie, as well as the other missing kids, had a _time limit_.

* * *

He ran out of polaroid film just prior to his eighteenth birthday. Fortunately, by that time, his parents had given him fifty dollars to spend on a present and he went straight to the electronics store to buy more.

The pin board he had hanging in the clubhouse was so full of photographs of Robert Gray now that one might have thought Bill had romantic inclinations for him. He most certainly didn’t, despite  having discovered at the tender age of twelve that he liked boys as much as he did girls (under pressure he might have admitted that Gray was handsome, though). Just a glance at the rest of the board would make the intention behind the photos clear. There were missing posters and newspaper clippings and post-it notes and maps, and all of them featured information on the children that had gone missing in Derry. He certainly appeared obsessed with Robert Gray, but not in the manner of one in love.  

He had photos of Gray from every angle, doing everything from shopping to attending kids’ parties. All were fairly innocuous. He had yet to witness the man doing anything to prove his culpability. To catch him in the act would take time. He could have snuck into Neibolt house or perhaps broken into his trunk to fast-track things, but he didn’t want to resort to doing anything illegal just yet. Besides which, they were _one off_ plans. He wouldn't be able to do them a second time without putting himself in considerable danger, so it was best to wait until he hadn't any other options.

He learned a lot about the kind of man Robert Gray was while following him. If Bill was to describe him in one word, it would be _boring_. He spent half his week sitting at a desk in an office building and the other half working as a clown; he shopped once a week at a grocery store and always bought the same things; he didn't appear to have any friends, and he never dined out, nor bought fast food. It was all very boring and monotonous. The only break in his otherwise tightly scheduled life were his visits to the Neibolt house, where he would linger for three to four hours a day, three times a week, and then return to his apartment. For a murderer, he didn’t have a very exciting life.

It took Bill a month of observation to finally capture something suspect. A whole month, but God, the wait had been worth it. It was a simple snapshot of Gray’s alter ego, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, hunched over a little girl. His hand was curled tight around the pale slope of her shoulder. That same girl was announced as missing a few days later. It wasn’t infallible evidence, but it was still a photo that suggested Robert Gray had been the last person to see the missing child.

He considered taking it to the police for a long while, but ultimately decided he needed more evidence if he was to persuade them there was something amiss with Robert Gray. One more incriminating photo would do the trick.

He needed to act fast. That girl, in all likelihood, was still alive. The sooner he got the next photograph, the sooner she could be reunited with her parents.

He was going to have to enter the Neibolt house.

* * *

It took great will and nerve for Bill to ascend the porch steps to the dilapidated Neibolt house. It was a house rumoured to have been present in the Victorian ages, owned by a multitude of well-to-do families until it fell into the hands of a distant relative, who let it fall into disrepair. He discovered that the front door had been locked, but he had anticipated this and made quick work of it with a hairpin. Granted, the book on lock picking he’d read had made picking a lock seem much easier than it actually was, and when the door finally swung open, he was greatly relieved. He hurried inside, closing and locking the door behind him. He didn’t particularly like being locked inside, but nor did he want Gray to realise someone had breached the property. His self-preservation instinct won over his unease.

The inside of the house was as disgusting as the outside. Dust was thick in the air and Bill had to hold a sleeve over his nose to prevent a bout of violent sneezing. The floorboards creaked a continuous chorus as he walked. He’d expected some to be missing considering the state of the place, but the floor was completely intact. As were the walls, though they were covered in peeling wallpaper and paint and so swathed in cobwebs that Bill didn’t dare get too close. The real damage arrived in the form of furniture, most of which were broken and rotting and falling apart. The kitchen table and chairs looked like they would collapse should someone try to take a seat. He found a couch in the lounge room, but it looked as though it had suffered water damage some years ago and had become so engulfed in mould that Bill feared he would catch something if he got too close. 

He neglected to go upstairs. He doubted he would find anything of value up there. When people wanted to hide something, they always did so in the _basement_. That was where Bill went next, creeping around until he found the appropriate door. He knew it had to be the basement door as he found three padlocks keeping it shut tight. It was the only door in the house that looked moderately functional and it had definitely only been installed _recently_. He took a photo of it and stuffed it into his back pocket.

Bill withdrew a flashlight from his pocket and shone it into each keyhole of the padlocks. Two of them looked relatively easy to get open; they were cheap locks, the kind you brought from a supermarket rather than a hardware store. The third, and the one installed on the strongest of the latches, had something covering the keyhole and was as heavy as a dumbbell in his grip. He found four rolls of numbers on the front. This one required a code. 

Mumbling curses under his breath, Bill took a photo of the current code it had (just in case the sequence of numbers were something Gray would remember) before placing his ear against the lock and beginning to scroll through each number, listening for a click. He’d seen this done in plenty of movies. Not on this kind of lock, but he couldn’t imagine how else he was going to break the code.

It only took him a few minutes to realise his method wasn’t working. With a sigh, he returned the lock to its former code and stepped away from the door, staring hard at it for several seconds before deciding he would have to resort to plan B.

Plan B wasn’t the best of plans. It was the most dangerous of any he’d had thus far, and it was nerve-racking just thinking about it.

He needed to find a good vantage point, hide, and wait until Gray arrived. Then he would finally have some answers.

Bill considered each item of furniture that he passed. He would have preferred to sit in a closet, or cabinet; something that he could easily and comfortably fit inside, but ultimately he decided upon a mini-fridge. It would be a squeeze, but he could fit inside, and once in there he could peer out into the hallway through a crack in the door. He wouldn’t be able to see into the kitchen, but that was okay. As long as the basement door was within view, it would suffice.

Bill carefully removed each rusted, grimy rack it had inside and hid them in the bottom most drawer of one of the intact kitchen counters. He made sure to push them right into the back and out of sight. It looked like the handles hadn’t been touched in some time, covered in dust as they were, so he didn’t have to worry about Gray peeking inside and finding them. With those out of the way, he was able to reach the spiderwebs in the far back of the fridge and dig them out with his fingers. It took everything he had not to run away screaming as he scooped out the dead body of a tarantula and carefully deposited everything into the same counter drawers holding the racks. He very nearly vomited at the sensation of the tarantula breaking into pieces in his palm.

Once the fridge had been emptied out, he sat by the window and peered out into the street, waiting. Gray’s visits to the house were pretty sporadic, but he could usually count on the man visiting in the afternoon on a Friday. He cleaned dust and spiderweb out from under his nails as he waited, flicking the gunk into a dusty corner.

Night was beginning to fall when he spotted the man striding up the footpath. His heart thundered in his chest as he hurried over to the fridge, fitting himself inside and closing the door just minutes before he heard a key clacking its way into a lock. Bill pressed his face into his knees to stifle his breathing. He needed to be quite, as quite as he could possibly be, or Gray would find him and he didn’t want to imagine what Gray would do if he discovered an intruder.

The door creaked open. Heavy footsteps. Bill very slowly created a crack between the fridge and door and glanced out, his fingers white and shaking as he watched long legs stride past him and into the kitchen.

Gray was mumbling under his breath. Lyrics to a song, he realised, but he didn’t recognise what song that was. 

“When I was a little lad, many years ago,” he sang, drumming the appropriate tune on a kitchen counter. Bill heard a thud – it must have been him dropping the duffel bag. He wanted so desperately to see what was hiding within, but he didn’t dare open the fridge any further.

“I wasn't very sportiful, and yet I wasn't slow.”

A zipper. Bill swallowed thickly when he heard metal clanking together.

“My mammy called me happy and my pappy called me fool, laughed at every little thing that was against the rules!”

The loud, noxious laughter that erupted from Gray made Bill jump and shiver. His skin came up in goosebumps. He squeezed himself smaller, fitting further into the back of the fridge, and he didn’t care at all when a slip of spiderweb that he’d missed slithered down the back of his shirt. He was focused wholly on whatever it was Gray was doing in the kitchen.

He heard a wet sound, followed by Gray grunting and more metal striking metal. Eventually he seemed to find what he was looking for, as the footsteps resumed and his long legs passed the fridge again, approaching the basement door. From where he was sitting, Bill couldn’t see the numbers he rolled into the lock. He could, however, see the massive, black hook hanging loosely from his fist. Bill’s stomach flip-flopped and he had to force himself to watch Gray descend the steps.

The moment Gray was out of sight, he quietly pushed the fridge door open, crawling out into the kitchen on shaking hands and knees. He had to act fast. He had to get out of there. If Gray found him here – he imagined himself on that hook and bile crawled up his throat. But first, he dragged his camera out of his pocket and snapped two photos of the duffel bag, grimacing at the flash and the whirr of the device. The house was so quiet that it _must_ have been heard.

The basement fell abruptly silent. For all of a second, Bill was rendered still, terrified. And then he heard Gray thumping his way back up the steps. Not walking, but running, and Bill’s heart hammered so hard in his chest that he feared it would break out of his rib cage. He didn’t bother moving silently anymore. He ran for the front door, throwing it open with a shoulder and leaping over the porch, running as fast as his legs could carry him through the yard and down the footpath. He knew Gray would catch him if he didn’t find somewhere to hide, and so he leapt into the first bush he came across, curling up tight among the leaves, his blood racing in his veins.

He heard footsteps passing him. And then, a few minutes later, they returned and started back toward the house. Bill didn’t dare rise to see if Gray was out of sight. He didn’t move a muscle. He scarcely even breathed. It seemed an eternity later that he crawled out of the bush, and as he glanced up into the sky, he saw that it was night. It had to be past curfew.

He retrieved his bike from the bridge he’d hidden it under and rode not home, but to the clubhouse in the barrens. He was still shaking upon arrival, though it had taken him a good twenty minutes for him to get there. With his photographs and camera in hand, he descended into the dark depths of the clubhouse and groped around for the light string, giving it a pull upon feeling it brush against his palm.

Bill finally brought the photos into view. The quality of them wasn’t the best. They were pale, grainy, but they would have to suffice.

The first thing he took note of were the tools. Some looked recently purchased, while others were rusted and had something dark drying on them. Most of them were things you would find in your standard toolbox; pliers and a box cutter and a hammer. The things that really stuck out to him were the saw and set of kitchen knives, which still had tags attached to them. Stuffed in beside the tools were off-white overalls with big red puffs on the front. His clown outfit. It was all… reasonably innocuous, until Bill reached the kitchen counter, where he stared at raw meat glad wrapped to a paper plate, seeping sticky red, and realised the meat probably hadn’t come from an animal. The fact Gray was bringing knives and saws and hooks to a heavily locked basement made what he was doing down there obvious.

Bill pinned his photos to the board. He would come back in the morning and take everything he had gathered to the police station. It wasn’t irrefutable evidence, but it would be enough to incriminate Gray, and he was sure Gray wouldn’t have been able to destroy every piece of evidence he had in there by morning. Assuming he would destroy any of it at all. Chances were, he just thought Bill a tweaker or a kid dared to enter the Neibolt house by their friends.

He turned off the light, turned on his finger torch, and heaved himself out of the opening of the clubhouse, cursing the fact he and his friends had overlooked a ladder. If ever he decided to utilise it after this, he would install one himself. A ladder couldn’t be that hard, nor expensive to build.

He didn’t manage to get far before something slammed into his jaw, sending him tumbling back into the hole. He landed hard on his back, the breath forced out of him by the impact. The finger torch went flying out of his hand. He just barely managed to roll out of a way before a body joined him in the clubhouse, landing with a thud that sent reverberations rocking through Bill's body. Bill groped around for his torch and closed his fingers over the cool metal, turning it on the intruder.

Robert Gray’s face lit up. He did _not_ look happy.

Bill let out a cry and scrambled back on his hands and feet, putting as much distance between him and Gray as was possible in the limited space of the clubhouse.

“Hey, Billy boy.” Gray's voice was cold, and high, and didn’t sound at all like the Robert Gray that had spoken to the receptionist. “Bill Denbrough. That’s who you are, right? I know it is. You must think you were _really_ clever, following me around all this time!”

Bill turned off the finger torch, going completely still. He was squeezed so tight into a corner that he may have very well become part of it, given enough time. He thought he might be able to get around Gray if he waited until Gray lost track of where he was and zipped around him. He was familiar enough with the clubhouse that it wouldn't be hard to navigate to the exit in the dark.

The clubhouse light flicked on. Bill cursed miserably. So much for that plan.

Gray smiled at him. He was carrying a knife that was as long as Bill's forearm. The only reason Bill didn’t break into terrified sobs at the sight of it was the knowledge that Gray had likely seen many tears in his time as a serial killer and some more weren't going to change Bill's circumstances.

He was going to die. He’d been so close, and now he was going to die.

“Wow, you’ve got a whole wall devoted to me here! If I didn’t know any better…” Gray winked, stepping deeper into the clubhouse. Closer.

Bill didn’t know what to do. There was nowhere for him to run.

“Cat got your tongue, Billy?” He waved the knife at Bill, as though wagging a disapproving finger. “That’s no fun! How about begging and pleading, all that fun stuff!”

“S-shove that knife up your a-ass,” was what Bill said to that. Not the smartest of things to say, perhaps, but he was _not_ going to beg.

“Oho!” Gray laughed aloud, sweeping his hair back with a hand. The manic grin on his face broadened. “You’re going to be _fun_! I can tell.” He stopped once beside the pin board, examining the photos of himself at length. He flicked a thumb over the pins keeping them in place. “I thiiink… I’ll take these ones for prosperity.” He snagged three of the most incriminating photos and shoved them into a pocket, then pulled at a corner of the board with such force that it went slamming into the ground. Bill flinched. “I’m gonna burn these, you know. All that effort for nothing. Such a shame! I like your little collage, but when you go missing, well… I wouldn’t want people to suspect me. They can get so nosy, those distraught parents!”

His mother was going to have a heart attack. His father, an aneurysm. He was sure of it. Losing both their children… god, how could _anyone_ cope with that? They were already depressed because of Georgie. He wasn’t sure there would be anything left of their former personalities once they lost Bill too.

Gray crept closer. Bill didn’t know whether to close his eyes and accept his death or make a run for it. Either way, he doubted he would be getting out of this alive.

“How d-did you find me?” he asked finally, curling his fingers into his knees to stifle their violent shaking.

“Everyone knows s-s-stuttering Bill.” Gray sneered at him. “The receptionist mentioned you, and guess who I saw on my street a few weeks prior? I never forget a face, Billy, and yours is particularly hard to forget.” He smiled wistfully to himself. “You have the same blue eyes as little Georgie, you see. I had _fun_ with Georgie.”

Bill stopped breathing. Not out of fear, but of anger.

“He screamed, and screamed, and screamed,” murmured Gray. “For you.”

Bill had moved before he could take conscious control of his body. He lunged himself at Gray, damn the consequences, and struck him hard across the face with a fist. At eighteen, he was tall and skinny, lanky, but he had some strength in his limbs from bike riding. He had a good right hook, and it was enough to send Gray reeling back, blood blooming beneath his nose. Bill went in for another hit, but Gray caught his fist, deftly pulling it out of the air.

The blood turned his lips red. They were pulled back in a snarl. He looked more animal than man as he snapped his teeth inches from Bill’s face, the point of his knife brushing Bill’s gut.

“You’ll scream too, just like he did," Gray hissed.

He didn’t plunge the knife in, as Bill had expected. He instead caught Bill around the throat and threw him to the ground, crawling on top of him so he wouldn’t be able to rise. Bill tore his nails into Gray's forearm and kicked his legs and twisted his body, but the grip held firm, and it wasn’t long before the lack of oxygen sent his vision spinning and darkening. His lungs burned. Just a slither of oxygen would have brought him relief, but he couldn’t even draw in that much through his constricted air pipe. His eyes began to bulge and tear up. He dug his nails into Gray’s wrists, drawing blood, and it had started to dry under his nails when finally he fell still.


	2. Cut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting into the rough stuff now! Make sure to keep those warnings in mind. Happy reading!

Bill had only ever experienced one migraine in his life, which had followed a fall off the monkey bars at the local park. He’d been eight at the time. He’d cried for an hour straight, which had only made it worse. Full of concern, his parents had taken him to the hospital, where a doctor had eventually given him liquid Ibuprofen and something else equally as foul tasting to help him sleep. He’d felt perfectly fine upon waking.

The first thing Bill took note of when next he awoke was the fact he was now experiencing his second ever migraine. The back of his head pulsed with pain. His eyes were dry. Nausea had gathered in his chest, and his throat was sore from an attack of bile. The slightest of movements made him feel even worse, but he remembered how he had gotten there and he knew he couldn’t remain where he was lying.

He threw himself onto his elbows and took stock of his location. With some relief, he noted that it wasn’t a bedroom (he’d read far too many a crime thriller where people were kidnapped for the purpose of sex). It was a very rundown, windowless room with a tiled floor and a single bulb attached to the ceiling, and he knew immediately that Gray must have taken him back to the Neibolt house and shoved him into a room downstairs. He wobbled to his feet and froze when he heard a faint clatter from his left leg. He kicked the blankets he’d been wrapped in aside and brought his ankle into view. A thick band of metal encircled it. When he tried to find the latch on it, he realised it had been soldered on. His breaths became shallow as this information registered and he sat back down, shaking as he tugged at the band. When that failed to move it, he coiled the chain around a fist and pulled. The chain didn’t break, and nor did whatever it was secure to. Giving up on that, he followed the chain to its latch – but it wasn’t a latch that he found. It was instead a hole in the floor, down which the chain had been threaded. It was dark down there. He didn’t know where exactly the chain went and he doubted he would ever find out.

Bill’s head throbbed so badly that he very nearly vomited as he lay back down in bed. He curled his knees to his chest, his skin beading with sweat, gathering at his hairline. He could not have felt more horrible. He considered yelling for help, but if he did, there was a good chance no one would come and he would succeed only in making his migraine worse than it already was. He wanted to cry, but he knew from experience that this too would make his migraine worse. He couldn’t do anything but lie there and wait for the pain to pass.

He wasn’t sure how long he slept before a thudding startled him from his rest. He crawled onto his hands and knees, rising just in time to see the door open and close. He tried to see the basement beyond, but it was too dark. He couldn’t make out anything other than the staircase.

Robert Gray greeted him with a smile. In his hand was clutched a small white parcel, and Bill’s stomach roiled at what might be inside it.

“Finally awake! Good, good.”

Bill scrambled back as he came closer. With the chain, he knew he would only be able to get so far.

“Don’t worry, little buddy. I’ve just grabbed you something to eat. It’s dinner time. Wouldn’t want you to miss out!”

“G-get away from me!” Bill cried, throwing himself into a corner. “I don’t w-want it! Leave me alone!”

“Leave me alone,” Gray parroted in a high, mocking voice, shaking his head and ignoring this request. He came within a few feet of Bill and dropped to his haunches, giving the parcel a tantalising wave. “Come on, I got it fresh from down the street.”

“N-no you didn’t,” said Bill accusingly. “I know what you do to those kids! I k-know!”

Gray seemed amused by his outburst. “Good for you! But I’m not the sharing sort, Billy. You don’t get to eat as well as _me_.”

Bill watched him peel open the parcel, unveiling a custard tart. It looked perfectly edible. Even smelt pretty good from where Bill was sitting, but he clamped his teeth shut anyway.

“Aw, don’t you trust me?” Gray gave a cackle of laughter, then moved closer, grabbing him by an ankle and yanking him until he was sprawled across the floor. Bill yelped and flailed his arms. “If you want me to force it down your throat, that’s fine by me! It’ll be _good fun_.”

The man seated himself on his hips. When Bill tried to grab at him, to push him off, Gray caught his hands in a fist and pinned them to the tiles.

“I’m n-not hungry,” he ground out, before continuing to clench his jaw.

“You will be if you don't accept my gift,” said Gray. He brought his free hand to Bill’s face, a thumb dragging over his top lip, attempting to push it up. “Come on, Billy. Just a bite. Two bites. You need to eat. I can’t have you expiring while I’m on the hunt!”

Bill kept his mouth shut tight. He didn’t part them even as Gray’s nails scraped over his gums, drawing thin rivulets of blood. Eventually Gray sighed and withdrew, seating himself heavily on Bill.

“Do you want me to pry them open with a knife? Because I will, and if I happen to slip…”

Bill whimpered at that threat. An image of Gray slicing into his tongue flashed through his mind.

“You don’t want that, right? So open your mouth.”

Very slowly, Bill did as Robert asked. He kept his eyes closed. This was humiliating enough without seeing Gray grin down at him.

A portion of custard tart was pressed past his lips a moment later. He chewed and swallowed. It tasted good. He hadn’t had custard tart in a very long time, and whoever had made this one had made it to perfection. He almost felt guilty about how much he enjoyed the next pieces, which practically melted in his mouth.

“Yummy, isn’t it.” Gray pressed another, larger piece onto his tongue. “You know, my neighbour had a dog when I was a kid. A golden retriever. I used to feed him stuff and he’d eat anything I gave him right out of my hand. _Any_ thing.”

Bill had never owned a dog, courtesy of his mother’s allergy, and the tone of voice Gray used made him glad of that fact.

“You eat like that dog.” Gray flicked crumbs off Bill’s bottom lip with a nail, then tore off another section of custard tart and pushed it past Bill's lips. After a moment of hesitation, Bill chewed and swallowed it. The comparison to a dog had put him on edge - even more so than he had been. It made him wary of what was in the custard tart. He couldn't be certain it wasn't home made, prepared by Gray especially for him with unconventional ingredients. Perhaps dog food.

“W-why’re you f-feeding me?” asked Bill. 

“So you won’t starve, of course! You don’t want to starve, do you? You don’t want to die, right? If you do…” His fingers constricted around Bill’s jaw. Bill choked out a quick, ‘no!’, and his grip slackened. “Then don’t ask stupid questions.”

Gray gave him one last piece of custard tart, then forced something much smaller and much more bitter past his lips. Bill didn’t manage to spit it out before Gray had clamped a palm down over his mouth. Bill’s eyes snapped open as his head was pressed to the floor, preventing him from struggling free.

“Swallow,” demanded Gray, watching Bill impassively as he writhed.

He’d put a pill on Bill’s tongue. It was bitter enough to make him gag, and the longer it was in his mouth, the more nauseous he felt. Bill knew, even if he didn’t swallow, it would still reach his stomach. The pill-infused saliva would slide down the back of his throat and there was nothing Bill could do about that. There was no point in prolonging his misery.

He swallowed.

With a smile, Gray released Bill and stood. Bill shakily pulled himself upright.

“That’s tramadol,” said Gray. “It’ll help you sleep.”

“I don’t…” He didn’t understand why Gray was doing any of this. Feeding him, giving him medication. This wasn’t the sort of thing you did for someone you intended to kill.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.” Gray headed for the exit. Bill attempted once again to see into the basement, but the dark was too thick for him to make anything out. “Sweet dreams, little buddy,” said Gray, and he closed and locked the door.

Bill listened to him thump his way up the stairs and click each padlock into place. The front door opened and closed shortly after, and Bill was barely able to make out the sound.

He resumed lying on his nest of blankets once alone. The anxiety Gray generated had been a temporary distraction from his migraine. His head had begun to pound again, bringing a painful tension to his temples. Bill groaned softly and curled into a tight ball.

It took almost an hour for the tramadol to work. Longer than any other medication he’d ever had, and it seemed to be taking effect in increments. Slowly, the ache in his head eased. He let himself relax, taking deep, warming breaths that pulled him toward slumber. He decided not to try to keep himself awake. There would be time to search the room for a means of escape later. Gray wouldn’t, after all, be returning until tomorrow afternoon. Even if he’d been out for a few hours, that was still a very, very long time away.

Slumber came fast to him. He dreamt, as he often did, of Georgie.

* * *

Bill awoke in a much smoother manner than he had earlier. He peeled open his eyes, stared up at the ceiling for a moment, and slowly recalled where he was and what he was doing there. It didn’t send him into the throes of panic like last time. He merely sighed and pulled himself upright, bringing his ankle – the one with a shackle coiled around it – into view. The shackle had been melded shut. He hadn’t dreamt that.

“Shit,” he murmured to himself, a succinct summary of his situation. He kicked his way out of his blankets and followed the chain back to its hole, where he proceeded to sit and pull on the chain. He gathered it into his lap, pulling and pulling until he felt resistance. He then clambered to his feet and gave the chain a good, heavy yank, and found he could not compel it to budge. Not even an inch. Whatever it had been tied to, it held fast. Though this was exactly what Bill had expected, he still slumped in defeat.

When he walked a slow circle around the room, he found he could reach each wall except the one containing the door. That one was just a few feet out of his reach. Even when he stretched, he could not quite touch the handle. It wouldn’t have done him much good even if he’d been able to, mind you, so that wasn’t a great loss.

He returned to his makeshift bed once it became apparent he wouldn’t be escaping tonight (or was it to _day_? He hadn’t any means to tell the time). With nothing else to do, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It didn’t come to him as easily as it had earlier. He'd already had his fill of rest and the medication he'd been given had ceased making him drowsy. He ended up taking refuge in his imagination instead, which was the only thing he _could_ do.

He imagined the typical things one would imagine in his situation: being found and reunited with his parents. He pictured himself running into their arms, holding his mother as she cried and grinning in relief as his father ruffled his hair for the first time in years. He imagined his friends being there too. Stan would make a comment about Bill’s tenacity, and Richie would give him a tight little hug, and Eddie would squeeze his hands in his own, and Mike and Ben would pull him into their arms so he would never feel unsafe ever again. Then there was Bev – she would probably kiss Bill like she had in that play so many years ago, though he was rather more interested in being kissed by a certain curly haired boy.

He scrubbed a palm down his face. These magnified his complete helplessness rather than made him feel better, but he clung onto them anyway, unwilling to relinquish the idea of being rescued. He didn’t want to let it go no matter how unrealistic it was. It was better than lying there and wondering what the future held.

He lay there for a long time, doing nothing except indulging in fantasies of a dramatic rescue and reunion. It was only when he bored of that that he started to wonder what being stuck in this room would do to him. Mentally, that was, because he’d read about how detrimental isolation could be to ones mental health, and the effects had the potential to be permanent. He found it impossible to shake that thought once it was in his head and he rolled onto his back, full of a nervous energy.

Isolation had been tested on monkeys. Hasn't it been called the pit of misery? Or despair? Something like that. It seemed a very apt name from Bill’s perspective. He’d been in the room presumably for less than a day and already loneliness and boredom was getting to him. It was clear by now that Gray intended to keep him alive, at least for the time being, and if Gray trapped him here a week, a month, a year… what would that do to him? It was a question that terrified him, so he stood and started to pace to distract himself from it. He just needed to keep himself active. As long as he was active, his mind wouldn’t start to crack. He would write books in his head. Daydream about his friends. Talk to himself. Plan an escape. Exercise. Anything to prevent a steep decline in his mental health. He could survive this.

He started doing push-ups once the pacing failed to keep him occupied. He decided he would do one hundred, so to build up the strength in his arms. He had no delusions of getting muscular while in here, seeing as it was unlikely he would be adequately fed, but he could build up strength in what muscle he already possessed. That was a good goal to have.

His arms failed on him upon reaching the tenth push-up, but in his defence, he hadn’t done push-ups in a very long time. He wasn't very active outside of bike riding. The only people in his social group that played sports were Mike and Stan. They played football and baseball, respectively. Bill had been pitted against them a few times in Physical Education, but rarely did his team manage to win a game. He had noticed, with some envy, that both of them had grown rather muscular in their arms and legs.

Bill managed to persevere through an additional ten push-ups, two hundred runs from one end of the room to the other, and sixty crunches by the time Gray returned to the house. His entire body ached. It would be a few days before he fully recovered his strength.

Gray entered wearing that ridiculous clown outfit of his, oddly enough. He smiled wide at Bill, showing off his fake buckteeth, and gestured for Bill to come closer. Bill refused to move. He sat staring at Gray with incredulity. He’d driven here wearing _that_?

“What’s wrong, Billy?” asked Gray, mock pouting. “Don’t you like clowns?”

“I’m e-e-eighteen, not s-six,” said Bill with reproach.

Gray chortled. “You’re never too old to enjoy a good clown!” He stepped deeper into the room, closing the door behind him with a heel. From within one of his pockets he withdrew another package and a small water bottle. Bill couldn’t help but lick his lips at the sight of them. All the exercise he’d done had left him thirsty and hungry. He was desperate to wet his throat.

“You’re looking a little thirsty, little buddy.” Gray came closer, once again gesturing for Bill to approach him. “But Billy won’t get anything unless he does what he’s told.”

With great reluctance, Bill took a tentative step closer, holding out a hand. 

“What do we say?”

Bill swallowed down the urge to make a witty remark. This wasn’t the time for such things. He needed to eat and drink. “Please.”

“Please what?”

“Can I h-have the whu-w-water and food.”

“From the top, Billy.”

Bill fought against the urge to roll his eyes. “C-can I please h-have the water and fu-f-food.”

“On your knees, first,” said Gray, his lips curving until the paint on them fractured. “I like you down there.”

Bill wrinkled his nose in disgust, but did as he was told. Humiliation was better than starvation or dehydration.

“Good.” The water was twisted open and handed to him. Bill gulped it down so fast that he nearly choked. Never had he tasted water so delicious and refreshing. He didn’t even care if it happened to be drugged, so long as it quenched his thirst. He drank it down to its last drop, then threw the empty bottle aside, his eyes raising now to the package in Gray’s hand.

“Little Billy was thirsty, hm?” He spoke to Bill as though Bill were a child. It must have been the voice he used for his ‘Pennywise’ persona. Bill found it unsettling, his gaze dropping to his knees while Gray crooned at him. “Bet he’s just as hungry. That’s why I got him nice fries today. He’s gonna need those carbohydrates!”

He heard paper being ripped open. One thick, salty chip was pressed to his mouth, and he slowly, with his cheeks burning, parted his lips so Gray could push it inside. He chewed and swallowed. It was cold, but it eased the gnawing in his belly. He didn’t much care about the taste so long as he was more comfortable. Two more chips were pressed to his lips and he ate them with the same haste as the first one.

When Gray extended a hand with chips sitting on his palm, like he was offering a dog a treat, Bill very nearly leaned closer. Full of shame for his desperation, he turned his face away, dropping his head between his shoulders. He might have been hungry, but he wanted to retain at least _some_ of his dignity.

“Come on, Billy.” Gray reached behind his head, yanking him closer by a fistful of hair. Bill yelped. “Eat up or I won’t be feeding you anything tomorrow. Naughty boys don’t get fed.”

“C-can’t I eat it n-normally?” he asked, and then tacked on a, “P-please,” in hopes that would persuade Gray to give him a break.

Gray pressed his hand insistently under Bill’s mouth. “Eat. _Now_.”

Closing his eyes against the urge to cry, Bill ate the chips out of Gray’s hand, finishing them as fast as possible so not to prolong the humiliation. Unfortunately, Gray decided to feed him the rest of the chips in the same manner, and Bill’s face was burning hot once the packet was empty. He felt nice and full, but also so incredibly agitated that he feared his anxiety would lead him to regurgitating his meal.

“You’ll get used to it,” said Gray, stroking his fingers through Bill’s hair, scratching idly at his scalp. Like he was a _pet_. Thankfully, he used the hand that wasn’t covered in oil and salt.

Bill pursed his lips and said nothing. If he tried to speak, his voice would break and he might cry.

Now more than ever, he wanted to go home.

“Now, do you need to use the bathroom?” Gray released his hair. “I’m sure you do.”

Bill remained still and silent.

“Come on, Billy,” Gray encouraged. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll leave you in here with a bucket.”

Bill grimaced at that prospect. The room was small enough that he wouldn’t be able to escape the smell of his own piss and shit. With clear reluctance, Bill nodded. Being escorted to the bathroom was humiliating, but at this point, what dignity did he have left to lose?

Gray left the room. He felt a slight tugging at his chain, followed by a thud from somewhere below him. Gray returned moments later, and to Bill’s surprise, he pulled the chain right out of its hole with no trouble at all. Winding it around a forearm, Gray caught Bill around the torso and heaved him out the door. Bill drank in as much of the basement as he could. He could see the outline of sharp, wet things, but there wasn’t enough light for him to be sure of what they were. Something cool and soft brushed the top of his head and he grimaced at the sensation, ducking closer to Gray to prevent any further incidents.

“Aw, does Billy not like my decorations? And I spent so long on them.” Gray clucked his tongue. “Come on, to the bathroom. Use your legs.”

It took some struggling for Bill to find his feet. He walked awkwardly at Gray’s side, being lifted off the floor every few steps. They crossed the hallway and ascended the stairs, entering a room on their right that had the same dark blue tiles as the room he had just left. The toilet in there didn’t look at all inviting. It was rusted and stained, and the smell emanating off of it was just awful. It appeared more unsanitary than even the public toilets Bill had used, which was quite the feat. 

Gray deposited him none too gently onto the seat. It was only his desperate grasping for the sink that prevented him from toppling onto the floor.

“Go on,” said Gray, watching him with a smile.

Bill glanced up at Gray, and then down at the toilet. “C-could you t-t-turn around?” he asked.

“And show you my back? Not going to happen, Billy.”

Gray made himself comfortable against a wall, folding his arms. He was quite the sight in his clown suit and makeup, his face caked white and lips a bright, bulging red. The tufts of orange hair on either side of his head were the most ridiculous thing Bill had ever seen.

A _clown_ was going to watch Bill relieve himself. He groaned.

“C-could you at least close y-your eyes?”

“Nope,” said Gray.

Bill slumped upon the seat. He could tell arguing wouldn’t get him anywhere.

He reached for his jeans zipper, turning around and pushing his trousers down just enough to free himself. He relieved himself as quickly as possible, which wasn’t as quick as he would have liked, courtesy of struggling to piss while he had an audience. Once done, he shoved himself back into his jeans and zipped himself up, nearly catching his cock on the zipper in his haste.

He glanced back at Gray before approaching the sink. The man was still watching him, unblinking. What a _creep_.

He twisted the cold tap. The water ran muddy for a few seconds before fresh water – or reasonably fresh, in any case – started to spill into the ceramic basin. He gave his hands a thorough wash, but neglected to make use of the bar of soap offered by the soap holder mounted above the sink; it was so moldy that it probably would have given him more germs than it would have killed.

Gray tugged him out of the bathroom before he could grab for a towel. He resorted to drying his hands on his thighs, which proved difficult while Gray was carting him back to the basement. He made a token effort to free himself, lunging for the front door, but Gray stifled it with ease by grabbing him around the shoulders so hard that the breath was forced out of him. His ribs creaked under the pressure. When he tried compelling Gray to release him by digging his nails into the man’s forearm, Gray smacked him across the head hard enough to make his ears ring and his vision flash white. It rendered him still long enough for Gray to throw him into the basement. Quite literally, leaving him to thump his way down the stairs and reach the landing with the crack of bone on cement, the sound like a thunderclap in his ears. He remained sprawled there for several long seconds, unable to will himself to move while blood beaded on his palms and bruises formed on his back, knees, and shoulders. He let out a soft, reedy moan.

The chain had been released and it curled itself across his body like a snake. With no one holding onto the other end, Bill could have made a run for it. Were he not so sore and dazed, he probably would have.

From the top of the staircase, Gray laughed. He flicked on the light before descending. “I offer you my hospitality and this is how you repay me?” He’d put on that mock-hurt voice again. “Next time, I won’t be so _kind_.”

Even if he’d had enough air in his lungs to reply, Bill hadn’t the presence of mind to offer a retort. His gaze was trained on the ceiling. The paint was peeling from it in great, swooping patches, but that was not what drew his eye. It was the corpses. There were too many to count, all of them hanging from the ceiling by hooks and nooses, swaying slowly in place. Few bodies had a full set of limbs, and fewer still had their chest intact. They gazed down at Bill with wide, empty eyes, their mouths stretched open in an expression of perpetual horror. There were so many of them and almost all of them were _children_.

He did not feel anything but a strong, abject horror. It crawled over his skin from the crown of his head to the tip of his toes, drawing the fine hairs on his arms and neck to attention. He forgot his pain. He forgot everything but the horror of what he was seeing.

…Was Georgie up there?

Bill didn’t have time to check as Gray had reached the bottom of the stairs. He hauled Bill back to his feet, snaking an arm tight over his clavicle and grasping both of Bill’s wrists in one large hand. Bill’s vision spun. Blood dribbled down from a cut on his forehead. He probably had a concussion after a fall like that.

“Jesus,” Bill breathed, still staring up at the bodies. He recognised one of them. Betty Ripsom. She was more skeleton than muscle now. “Juj-j-jesus. You’re _sick_.”

“I’m in perfect health,” said Gray, and he proceeded to laugh like this was the height of humour.

Bill looked at him incredulously. Sick _and_ completely insane. “You need to be l-locked up. Locked u-up and forgotten about.”

Gray frowned. He caught Bill by the chin, bringing their faces close together. “Sounds to me like you want to _float_ , little buddy. You want to join them.” His breath warmed Bill’s jaw. It carried with it the scent of something sweet. It made Bill’s stomach roll to imagine this man had attended a child’s birthday party today and partaken in the confectioneries. “Why else would you be so _inconsiderate_ toward your gracious host?” Gray finished in a hiss.

Bill considered spitting in his face, but ultimately decided against it; that would be throwing his life away for a momentary victory. He doubted Gray would have any qualms with stringing him up to teach him a lesson in manners.

The hand on his chin dropped to his neck, a thumb dragging over his throat. “Do you want to float?”

Bill breathed in unsteadily past clenched teeth. He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see the bodies anymore, especially knowing how great a potential there was for him to end up there too. “N-no.”

“Not good enough, Billy,” said Gray, applying pressure to his windpipe. “Try again.”

Bill reflexively swallowed. “I’m s-s-sorry.”

“For?”

“B-being incons-su-siderate.”

Gray released his neck. He dragged Bill the rest of the way back to the room, depositing him onto the blankets. Bill, thoroughly beat up and disorientated, didn’t make any more attempts to flee. His earlier migraine was making a gradual return and he just wanted to lie down and sleep. Now that he had overcome his shock, _everything_ hurt.

Gray knelt down beside him and began to thread the chain back into the hole. Bill paid him little mind.

“A warning, little buddy,” said Gray, and Bill glanced over. “If you try to pull this chain back out of this hole while I’m reattaching it, I’ll come back up here and break every finger on your right hand. Every single finger. You’ll never be able to draw again.”

Bill didn’t ask how Gray knew that he drew. He merely shuddered and nodded. He knew Gray wasn’t one for idle threats.

“Good boy!” Gray leaned over to rake his gloved fingers briefly through Bill’s dishevelled hair. “If I do not return tomorrow, I will be back on the weekend.” He stood. “A human can survive a week without water and a month without food, right? You’ll be fine.”

“You’re g-going to leave me here?” Bill hated the note of terror in his voice, hated the implication that he _wanted_ Gray’s company. That couldn’t be further from the truth, but he needed the food and water Gray brought with him if he wanted to survive.

“I can’t very well skip work. Nose to the grindstone and all that!” Gray flapped a hand, heading for the door. “If you get desperate, well, you have two legs, and I’m sure you’d be able to function just as well with just one.”

“Are you… are you t-t-trying to su-s-suggest I…”

The door slammed shut before he could voice his question.

* * *

It was not a week, but three days later that Gray returned. Bill had become so thirsty and hungry in that time that he shook spasmodically upon the tiles, curled up where he had collapsed. He didn’t have the energy to move, not even when Gray entered the room and crouched down beside him. He merely shifted his head so he could look up at the man, his eyelids drooping with the urge to return to slumber. It was surprising just how sleepy one became when they were thirsty and hungry. Or perhaps he had been passing out – it was hard to say.

He was distantly grateful Gray had forgone the clown outfit.

“Oh, Billy…” Gray clucked his tongue and pulled Bill upright, dragging him over to a nearby wall. He dropped Bill against it. “We’d best get some food in you, hm? Can’t have you expiring on me. You won’t be any fun as a corpse…” He reached into a plastic bag by his feet. Bill hadn’t even noticed it. “Well, not the sort of fun I’m after, anyway.”

Bill swallowed. His tongue was sticky and heavy in his mouth.

“What do you want first? Water or food?”

“Water,” Bill murmured, the sound thin and weak in his throat.

He heard Gray unscrew the lid of a bottle of water, which he then pressed to Bill’s lips. The presence of water seemed to create within him a new spring of energy, and he grasped at the bottle, tipping it up and drinking the water in large, hungry gulps. Another bottle was given to him a moment later. Gray forced him to drink this one at a slower pace by holding onto it, which was probably a good thing as he had spilt a considerable amount of the last bottle on his shirt.

Once the bottle was empty, Bill licked his lips and unfurled his limbs, the shake in his body gradually subsiding. His stomach had stopped hurting now that there was something in it.

Gray swiped a hand through his hair. His very messy, matted hair. “That’a boy! Now for food.”

He’d brought a ham and leek quiche. Not Bill’s favourite food, but he was in no state to complain. He let Gray fork small portions of it into his mouth and he chewed and swallowed them with relish. As much as he might have disliked quiche in the past, it was delectable now. He might even go so far as to call it the best food he'd ever tasted. He licked his lips once he was done and gazed down at the now empty container, still ravenous.

“Any more?” he asked, unable to help himself.

“Don’t get greedy,” Gray admonished, squeezing the paper into a tight ball and throwing it aside. He shuffled closer and deftly picked Bill up off the floor. “You _reek_ , little buddy. You need a bath. Can’t have you stinking up my basement.”

Seeing as the basement currently smelt of decomposition and shit, Bill didn’t see how a little body odour would make any difference, but he wasn’t going to protest a bath. The accumulation of grime made his skin itchy and slick. He wanted to scrub it off.

“Wait, the chain,” he began, but Gray shushed him.

“Already undone.” He started to tug it out of the hole with one hand, coiling it around his wrist. Bill felt rather like a dog on a leash. “Don’t worry, little buddy. I wouldn’t risk breaking your ankle.”

Considering Gray had recently pushed him down the stairs, he very much doubted that. “Right…”

He was surprised to find Gray had already filled the tub with warm water. He sat Bill on the toilet and stripped off his clothes, save for his underwear, which he allowed Bill to be the one to remove. Bill could have undressed without help, but Gray seemed insistent on doing everything himself.

“Into the tub,” Gray instructed, and he really needn’t have, as he lifted Bill off the toilet and dropped him into the water anyway.

Bill landed with a splash that sent water spilling over the edges of the ceramic bath. He scrambled to right himself, grasping for leverage, and ended up spluttering and flailing as Gray shoved his head under the water. He dunked Bill a total of three times before allowing Bill to catch his breath. Bill crawled his way onto the end of the tub and folded his body over it, taking in desperate, wheezing breaths. When he had recovered enough strength to do so, he pushed his hair out of his eyes, back over his scalp.

Gray had seated himself on a stool and was lathering up his hands with soap. Bill regarded them with trepidation. Was he really going to…? Evidently he was, because before Bill could protest, he leaned over and started scrubbing at Bill’s back.

“I c-can do this myself,” Bill mumbled, drawing his knees up to his chest.

“You’ll be too slow,” said Gray simply, his fingers gliding along Bill’s nape. He smiled toothily. “Don’t worry, little buddy. You might be a pretty boy, but you’re still a lanky, sinewy kid.” He shoved the soap into Bill’s hand, then directed Bill to scrub it over his chest. “Not exactly the sorta guy that gets one’s loins burning.”

“I’m not a kid.” Bill rubbed the soap between his pecs. “I’m e-eighteen.”

“What, are you trying to _convince_ me?” Gray barked a laugh. Bill’s face turned red, right up to the ears.

“N-no, I just- I’m n-not a kid.”

“Sure, Billy. Sure.” Gray gave his hands a rinse in the water and reached for a bottle of shampoo, squeezing a dollop into a palm. “Maybe I’ll teach you how to act like an adult. Would you like that?”

Bill’s insides squirmed. “I d-don’t want a-anything from you.”

“Now, Billy, you know that’s a lie. You wanted my food and my water, and you wanted this bath.”

Gray reached for his hair and Bill ducked away, scowling. “I’d g-get them from literally a-a-anyone else if I could!” he snapped.

“But you can’t-“ The word ‘can’t’ came out sharp and elongated. “You can’t get those things from anyone else. Not anymore. Just from me.” He reached again, and this time Bill wasn’t fast enough to avoid his hand. He tore his fingers into Bill’s hair and dragged him close, his breath rolling over Bill’s dripping skin, chilling it. “If you want to be comfortable here, you’d better remember that.”

Bill considered a retort. He had a few good ones in mind, but as he was naked and wet and Gray’s hand was twisted so tight into his hair that blood had begun to bead at his hairline, he didn’t think it wise to voice any of his witticisms.

“Fine,” he said quietly.

Gray’s grip slackened, his fingers beginning to work the shampoo into Bill’s hair. It caused the fine tears Gray had created on Bill’s scalp to sting. Compared to the hunger pangs he had experienced earlier, it was an easy pain to ignore.

Thankfully, Gray didn’t push his head under the water again. He instead grabbed a jug from the floor and rinsed out the shampoo with an unexpected tenderness, his fingers working like those of a hairdresser. Bill had always liked having his hair washed at the hairdressers. He’d like the intimacy of it. Here with Gray, however – not so much, but he could not deny that it felt nice. He had to consciously stop himself from leaning into the touch.

He continued to wash himself down with the soap as Gray worked. He didn’t know when next he would get the opportunity to bathe, so he washed himself as thoroughly as possible, scrubbing every inch of skin until it was pink. Having touched that filthy basement floor, he also wanted to make sure he hadn’t any remnants of _corpse_ on himself.

The only place he left untouched were his genitals. He wasn’t about to clean those while Gray was present to witness it. Far too embarrassing. Being submerged in water would be sufficient in cleaning them, anyway.

It occurred to him as Gray moved to dry his hands on a towel that he didn’t have any clean clothes to wear. His heart raced with panic at the thought of being made to sit in that cold, dusty basement in the nude, but Gray briefly left the room and returned a short time later carrying a bundle of clothes. He dropped back onto the stool with them in his lap and began to sort through the pile, considering each article of clothing carefully before tossing it aside. Bill spied several shirts with pop culture references on them that he wouldn’t have minded wearing, but Gray selected black slacks and a long-sleeved red shirt, kicking everything else out into the hallway.

Bill was grateful that Gray handed him a towel instead of making him cross the room to get one. He wrapped it tight around his waist as he stood out of the water and grabbed a second one to dry down, which thankfully Gray didn’t seem to mind.

“You’ll need these as well,” said Gray, producing a pair of boxers from the pile. He handed them to Bill. For a long moment, Bill was completely silent, staring at the undergarment.

There was a zip on the side.

“I made them myself,” Gray informed him, answering his silent question. Bill’s gaze flicked to him. “Sewed them last night.”

“You… you made these?”

Gray seemed to take this as a compliment rather than the horrified incredulity that it was. “The _zip_ part. Not the rest.”

“You’re so… I don’t…” At a loss for words, Bill simply shook his head and continued to towel himself down. Once sufficiently dry, he slid into the boxers, allowing the towel to drop only once they were securely in place. Gray snorted softly at this display.

“You’ll have more clothes later,” said Gray as he handed Bill the shirt and pants.

Bill started to pull on the slacks, expecting the same zip on the side, and startled when he realised they were not pants, but a _skirt_. A long, black, flowing skirt. He gaped at Gray, who merely smiled at him.

“Y-you can’t seriously w-want me to wear this?” He started to throw them aside and was prevented from doing so by Gray, who grabbed him by the wrist.

“I didn’t have enough time to make you pants.” Gray flapped a hand. “Doesn’t matter. You either wear the clothes I give you or nothing at all. Your choice, Billy.”

They stared hard at each other for a long moment. Bill was, predictably, the one to give in. A skirt was bad, but being naked was worse. He pulled the skirt over his head, blushing faintly as he tugged it low down his hips. Should he ever manage to escape this place, he hoped it wouldn’t have to be in _this_.

Next came the shirt. He noted with some dismay that it, too, was designed for girls. He pulled it on nonetheless and grimaced at how well it fit on him.  

Gray was upon him the moment he was fully dressed. He snaked a forearm over Bill's clavicle, holding Bill to his chest as he raked a comb though Bill’s wild auburn hair. He made it nice and neat and tucked what few strands had escaped him behind Bill’s ears. Bill remained silent and still throughout the whole ordeal.

“There,” murmured Gray, opening the medicine cabinet and tossing the comb back in. “You’re ready for the kitchen.”

“Th-the kitchen?” Bill gave the bathroom a quick survey while Gray was otherwise occupied. He didn’t see anything useful anywhere in the room.

“You’ll be cooking and cleaning.” Gray closed the cabinet, giving Bill a push with his elbow. “Go on! Downstairs. You have work to do!”

Bill stumbled and caught himself on the door frame, then began walking. He didn’t try to flee. He wouldn’t have gotten far with Gray holding onto the chain. In his current state, there was no chance he would have been able to overpower him and wrench himself free (and even without the remnants of fatigue from dehydration and starvation, Gray seemed quite a bit stronger than him).

He carefully made his way down the rickety stairs, holding tight onto the railing. Some of it crumbled under his fingers. He remained tense until he reached the landing, where he heaved a breath of relief and headed for the kitchen. Gray thumped his way down after him, considerably less cautious, and then proceeded to give Bill's back such a hard slap that he was propelled forward. He had to catch himself on the edge of the very worn kitchen table.

While Bill was busy orientating himself, Gray stepped deeper into the kitchen and dropped to his haunches before a counter, reaching into a cabinet beneath the sink. He withdrew several spray bottles, a cloth, and a coarse brush. All these items were carted over to Bill and pushed into Bill's arms.

“Start cleaning,” he instructed, and Bill balked.

“Cleaning?” Bill cast a glance around the kitchen. It had about three layers of filth coating every inch of it. “ _Here_?”

“Where else?” Gray started to unfurl the chain from his arm. “Start cleaning, Billy. I’m giving you a week to make this place look spotless.”

“I d-don’t think that’s possible.” Bill carefully placed his implements on the kitchen table, examining the scrawl of writing on the sprays. Gray had written ‘cleaner’ on all of them in block letters, and that was all. He hadn’t any idea of their individual use.

“You’ll make it possible,” said Gray, crossing the kitchen to padlock Bill's chain to another length of chain that crawled up from the floor. Gray clearly didn’t trust the wood to be able to withstand an escape attempt, and Bill couldn’t blame him. With enough pulling, Bill expected he would have been able to wrench out any floorboard Gray attached a ringlet to.

Bill picked up the cloth and stared at it. “I th-think I’ll need water.”

“Fill the sink,” said Gray. He dropped into a chair. Bill thought it miraculous that it didn’t collapse under his weight.

Bill hadn’t even known the sink worked. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised seeing as the bathroom remained functional as well.

“O-okay.” A week to clean this whole kitchen. He had his work set out for him.

Bill filled the sink and gave the cloth a soak, then started on the kitchen counter. He didn’t pick up as much grime as he had been expecting. Gray must have already cleaned it a few times.

While he struggled to scrub away the film of dust on every inch of the kitchen, Gray watched him from the table. He was silent and still, his attention rapt on Bill. Bill found it uncomfortable to be watched with such intensity, but he tried to ignore it and focus on his task. It was actually kind of nice to have something to do. Sitting in that room, day in day out, had made him desperate for stimulation, and while cleaning wouldn’t have been his first choice of activity (or even his tenth), it was still better than nothing. He liked the way the cloth felt under his fingers and the way the water dripped and spread and how easily the grime came up with the application of a little elbow grease. He felt like he was accomplishing something. Not what he would have preferred to be accomplishing, mind, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Bill had become practiced at cleaning after Georgie’s death. His mother and father had neglected the house in their depression and the upkeep had often been left to Bill. He knew all the tricks; how to get wine out of carpet, how to make tiles shine, how to apply polish to the floorboards in an even layer. He couldn’t employ any of those tricks here, but perhaps in the future Gray would provide him with better cleaning utensils. There was only so much you could do with some spray and a cloth.

He worked for so long that the light that had been peeking in from a nearby window faded away. When the room neared pitch darkness, Gray turned on a light and continued to watch. Bill tried not to pay him any mind. He didn’t know how anyone could sit and watch someone clean for hours on end without getting bored and it unsettled him.

His fingers were pink by the time Gray instructed him to stop. “Up,” said Gray, and he shakily rose to his feet, dropping the cloth into the dirtied sink water. He scrubbed his hands dry on his skirt. “Not bad, little buddy,” Gray murmured. He gestured for Bill to come closer. “When you’ve finished this room, I’ll let you into the lounge. Maybe even leave you there throughout the day. How about that?”

Bill had to fight down the urge to grin. It would be best not to let on just how enthused he was by the thought of being left alone anywhere but the basement. Gray might decide against giving him more privileges if he thought Bill was scheming. “T-that would be g-g-great.”

Gray stared at him for a long moment, then smiled. He stepped out of his chair and worked the chain free of the padlock, coiling it once again around a forearm.

“Back into the basement, Billy.”

Bill’s heart dropped. “C-can’t I stay up here?”

Gray snorted. He gave Bill a tug, none too gently pulling him in the direction of the stairs. “Finish the kitchen and we’ll see!” He wagged a finger at Bill over his shoulder. “Privileges have to be earned. And they can be taken away.”

Bill didn’t know what privileges he currently had left and he didn’t want to find out what Gray could take away. He followed Gray down the stairs, making a furtive note of his surroundings. There were items scattered across the floor, some which looked like they could be used to bludgeon someone, but Bill, with Gray so close, couldn’t chance making a grab for one of them. He let Gray guide him into his little cell and sat down on his blankets while Gray threaded the chain through the hole.

The door shut, engulfing him in darkness.

* * *

The kitchen became a new part of Gray's routine. Every evening he dropped in to feed Bill, give him water, and then escort him upstairs to clean. Bill would be made to spend hours crawling across the floor with the brush and cloth, scrubbing at every surface and applying chemicals where necessary. He had to be careful about just what spray he used as he had found through experimentation that one of them caused sections of the wood to turn black. While the black didn’t look terrible, interspersed through the brown as it was, he feared that it would eventually lead to rot, and so he put that spray aside to be used on tiles instead.

Even with Gray staring at him throughout, the cleaning wasn’t unpleasant. It gave Bill something other than his circumstances to think about. He did occasionally have desperate, clawing thoughts about escape and his eyes would involuntarily flick around the room, searching for some means of incapacitating Gray, but those thoughts were only ever brief. Once he found a new stain to scrub at, his attention would be diverted.  

It took him a total of five days to scrub away every inch of filth. The result was presentable enough, if not perfect. There were some things that couldn’t be tackled with a thorough cleaning. If this kitchen was ever to look as good as new, it would have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Once he had put his supplies away, he glanced up at Gray from the floor, waiting patiently for his commentary. It took several minutes for Gray to realise Bill had finished.

“Not bad, little buddy. You finished that faster than I expected.” Gray reached down into his duffel bag, which he had dropped by his feet. He withdrew several small, white packages and gestured for Bill to come closer. With some reluctance, Bill did. “Now we can move on to other house chores. Specifically, cooking! You know how to cook, don’t you?”

Bill did. He even enjoyed cooking, provided the recipe he was working on wasn't too complex. To the suggestion of cooking now, however, Bill frowned. “I t-t-thought y-you were going to luh-l-let me into the lounge room.”

“Later,” said Gray, extending one of the packages. “Cook for me first.”

Bill stared at the package. Very tentatively, he took it, raising it to his nose. He gave a sniff. The scent of freshly cut beef filled his nostrils, and it was only as he pondered why Gray would be carrying around cuts of meat in his duffel bag that he realised it wasn’t actually beef-

He almost dropped the meat, so severe was his disgust. Hands trembling, he put the package down on the table.

“Wh-who is that?” he asked, very quietly.

“Some kid. I don’t remember the name.” Gray gave a dismissive wave of his hand.

His complete apathy made Bill’s temper surge. He had to bite down on his tongue to get it under control.

“I’m not cooking that,” he said resolutely. He could not disrespect Gray’s victims in that way.

“Yes, you are,” said Gray simply, and he attempted to push the package back into Bill’s hand.

“No,” Bill protested. He retreated a step. “I’m not doing it. I’m n-not fucking d-doing it.”

“You think you have a choice.” Gray burst into loud, noxious laughter and rose from his chair, taking long steps toward Bill. “You will, Billy. You’ll cook it and then you’ll serve it.”

Bill bared his teeth at him. “Fu-fuck you.”

Gray tilted his head slowly. He didn’t stop advancing on Bill. Bill swerved around the table, trying to put distance between them despite knowing full well Gray would ultimately catch him. The chain made sure of that.

“You’re making me mad, little buddy.” Gray certainly looked it too, his brow wrinkled and his mouth curved into a deep frown.

Bill looked around desperately for something he could use as a weapon. He considered the contents of the duffel bag, but it was on the other side of the table, and he wasn’t likely to reach it before Gray reached him. The only other thing he could think of was to grab the chair. It wasn’t much, but it was _something_.

He lifted it off the floor just in time to shield himself against Gray’s furious lunge. He thrust the chair forward, smacking Gray in the face with a leg, sending blood spilling over his nose and chin. Gray snarled and bared his teeth, and Bill distantly noted that there was red staining the pearly white. Bill didn’t quite feel like he was in his own body as he attacked Gray again. He was somewhere else, somewhere safe with his friends, not jarring chair legs into vulnerable flesh and certainly not falling back as his weapon was grabbed and thrown into him.

He landed hard on his back, the chair slipping from his grasp and slamming down beside him. The thud of it rang in his ears. Gray was upon him within seconds, sitting on his stomach and holding his wrists in a fist, pinning them above his head.

Blood dripped steadily from the cut Bill had torn across his nose. It landed on Bill’s chin, sliding down to soak into his shirt.

“You,” said Gray slowly, his voice little more than a hiss. “Need to be taught some manners.”

Bill twisted in Gray's grip. “I d-don’t c-c-care what you do to mu-m-me, I won’t cook t-them!”

“You will.” Gray shifted atop him, his free hand groping around the hem of Bill’s shirt. “You’re not as brave as you think you are, Billy. Oh, no… bravery never survives a little pain. You’ll see.”

Bill spat at him. It mingled with the blood as it slid down the bridge of Gray’s nose and once again Gray bared his teeth at him.

“You really want me to hurt you, don’t you, Billy? Because you wouldn’t do these things if you didn’t. I’m happy to oblige, you know. _Happy_ to.”

His shirt was shoved up under his chin, unveiling a pale stretch of chest and two dusty nipples. Bill didn’t quite understand what he was going to do until Gray reached into a back pocket and withdrew a box cutter. He wagged it in Bill’s face.

“What should I write, Billy? Pennywise? Bill Gray?”

Fear prompted Bill to breathe in short pants. He couldn’t find it within himself to reply.

His experience with physical pain was limited. He knew, whatever Gray did to him, it was going to be hard, if not impossible to cope with.

Gray exposed the blade of the box cutter. He applied it gently to Bill’s chest, but did not cut. Not yet.

“If you apologise,” he said quietly, patiently. “I won’t hurt you as badly.”

Bill knew right away that there wasn't any point in refusing. Any pride he retained by holding his tongue would only shatter under Gray's blade. He was not one of those actions heroes in the movies that could withstand everything thrown at them; he was just a boy, and he would scream and cry like any other when cut. 

“I’m suh-s-s-sorry,” he forced out, his throat clenching around the words. “I j-just d-d-doh-don’t w-want to cook them. Don’t m-make me cook them.”

“After the first few times, it’ll get easier.” Gray applied the cutter to his skin. Blood beaded under the blade and Bill let out a whimper. “You will get used to life here, Billy, or I will make you _float_.”

The blade elicited further whimpers from Bill, all strangled and plaintive. The first cut was thin, shallow, but the pain was too foreign and sharp for Bill to keep quiet. He tried biting down on his bottom lip and still failed to stifle a cry as Gray swiftly drew the blade into a curve, drawing a bright red ‘G’ into his skin, just under his pectorals. The sensation left behind was a hot throbbing that made Bill want to writhe. He squeezed his eyes shut, blinking away the moisture that had gathered in them.

He felt Gray position the cutter beside the first letter, smudging the blood in the process, and Bill knew he would be doing ‘R’ next. ‘R G’. Robert Gray. Better than the whole name, perhaps, but not by much.

The next cut prompted him to gasp and jerk in place. Gray lowered his body, pressing their stomachs flush together in an effort to force him still. He mostly succeeded. He was heavy enough to act as an effective restraint. He applied the cutter again, dragging it down, deeper into Bill’s flesh this time. It was enough to draw forth a shout.

Gray burst into flesh laughter and deviated from his task briefly to run a thumb over Bill’s cheeks, gathering the tears that had slipped from under his eyelashes. Bill watched dazedly, through glassy eyes, as Gray licked them off the digit.

“Almost as tasty as the flesh,” the man murmured, picking up the box cutter once more. Bill tensed.

There was just one more cut. One more, and it would be over. Just one more. This thought became a mantra that increased in insistence as the blade entered his skin.

One more, one more, one more-

Bill shivered and whimpered, twisting beneath Gray.

One more, one more-

“Done.”

Gray gave a soft tap to his temple with the box cutter, his gentleness completely at odds with the pain he had just inflicted on Bill. "Take a look, Billy."

Out of fear that Gray would cut him again should he disobey, Bill forced his eyes open. He looked down. There was so much blood smeared over his abdomen that he couldn't make out the letters Gray had carved into his skin.

“I n-need a…” He had to pause and collect himself. “T-towel," he finished.

“A towel? For this?” Gray pointed in a rather dramatic fashion to the mess on Bill’s abdomen.

Bill nodded.

“What a waste of a towel! No, no…”

Gray returned the box cutter to his pocket, curling his hand around Bill's neck and holding him firmly to the floorboards. He lowered his head. His mouth closed over Bill’s wounds, the flat of his tongue gliding across the spill of blood. He lapped it up like a dog with long, hungry licks, swallowing it down as though it were the sweetest of nectar. His tongue felt smooth on Bill’s skin. Smooth, and warm, and slick.

Bill shuddered at the sensation. It should have been awful. It should have been, but it wasn’t; it was warm, and tingly, and it made him hypersensitive all over, momentarily distracting him from the pain engulfing his abdomen. He had little experience with intimacy and he was rather mortified to find Gray was having an _effect_ on him. Gray would no doubt be able to feel the growing bulge between his legs in a minute.

Gray did notice. He arched an eyebrow at Bill, the tip of his tongue resting on the edge of a cut. Bill’s face burned with shame.

“Are you a masochist, little buddy?” Gray chuckled. “It’s alright if you are. In fact, I would quite like that!”

“I’m nuh-not!” Bill insisted, sniffling.

“Mhm, sure.” Gray gave his wounds one last, long lick before clambering to his feet, allowing Bill to unsteadily find his own. “You can deal with that later. Now, it’s time to cook!”

His chest hurt so bad. He kept his fingers twisted into the collar of his shirt, preventing the fabric from gluing itself to the wounds.

“If you cook,” said Gray. “I’ll give you tramadol.”

Bill shook his head. Gray sighed, then struck out with an arm, catching Bill by the wrist. He wrestled him over to a counter and grabbed the meat and a knife in his free hand. Bill tried valiantly to wrench himself out of Gray’s grip, but to no avail; Gray was considerably stronger than the scrawny eighteen-year-old that was Bill Denbrough. He overpowered Bill with ease.

Gray placed the meat on the freshly cleaned counter and forced Bill to stand in front of it, keeping him boxed in with his arms and legs. His broad chest warmed Bill’s back.

“We’ll do it together, then,” he murmured into Bill’s hair. His lips brushed the crown of Bill's head, as though he were kissing his scalp. “I’ll teach you to be _such_ a good cook, little buddy. You’ll be able to cook for me every day and night.” He carefully slid the knife into Bill’s palm, closing his hand around both Bill’s fingers and the handle. He had big hands. Big rough hands that distracted Bill from both his pain and his arousal. “Every day and night until we wither and join the weeds.”

Bill shivered at that thought. “D-don’t make me do this,” he pleaded. He wasn't aroused anymore. Not even a little bit. “P-please.”

“Is it really so bad?”

“Yes,” Bill said, choking on the words. “Yes i-it is! It’s – I don’t w-want to!”

He felt Gray give a flippant shrug and his hand curled tighter around Bill's fingers. Gray guided him into slicing into the meat. It was just like cutting into ground beef, so soft and easy. Bill swallowed and closed his eyes against the urge to start crying again. He’d already shed far too many tears today.

“There we go,” said Gray, directing him to cut the meat into thin slices. “You’re a natural, Billy!”

Blood spread beneath the meat and Bill distantly noted that it didn't show any signs of having been frozen. The meat must have been recently acquired.

“Wanna know what we’re making?” asked Gray.

Bill said nothing. The knife cut cleanly through another section of Gray’s latest victim.

“Stir-fry!”


	3. Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter has NSFW content! More NSFW than in previous chapters.
> 
> Thank you for all the feedback I've received so far, both on tumblr and on here! I often read them when I'm feeling unmotivated. You guys are the best. ♥ ♥ ♥

It took Gray five long visits to get Bill cooking on his own. It was ultimately Bill’s desire to escape that overwhelmed his resistance; while Gray was forced to ‘help’ him cook, he would not put down his guard, nor leave Bill alone. He couldn’t concoct any sort of plan while Gray was attentively watching his every move. To prevent future deaths, he needed to swallow his morals and do what Gray asked.

He cooked. He cried a little while he did it, but he did it nonetheless. Having regularly cooked at home and been an enthusiastic participant of home economics class (particularly when they baked confectioneries), he was a decent enough cook, and what experience he didn’t have, Gray happily filled in for him. The only real difficulty he encountered was ensuring the meat inside remained rare. Good and juicy. Bill was someone who always ate his meat well done, so searing the meat wasn’t a skill he had previously needed to learn. If he presented the meat to Gray even a little over done, Gray would get mad, and Gray was terrifying when mad. While he hadn’t used the box cutter on Bill again, he did inflict bites as punishment for errors, and sometimes he gripped Bill’s hair hard enough to draw blood while doing it. Very occasionally, if he felt Bill had done an especially bad job, he would hit Bill upside the head. Bill had gotten better at telling when the meat was ready for consumption as a consequence. Pain was a good motivator.

The few times Gray did the cooking, he turned out to be quite the talented chef. He told Bill he needed those skills to prepare the game he gathered to perfection.

“Hunting and cooking our own meat runs in the family,” he said. “Well, except for that idiot, Maturin. He never hunted a day in his life.”

Gray went on to complain regularly about Maturin, about how annoying he had been as a guardian and how wonderful it had been to liberate himself from the man. Gray had never had parents – not something he had ever angsted about, he told Bill - so the responsibility of raising him had fallen to his elder brother. Needless to say, Maturin hadn’t done a very good job. A man of twenty-five with no interest in parenting being suddenly saddled with a toddler had resulted in the man Gray was today, or so Gray claimed.

Despite himself, Bill was intrigued. When he wasn’t planning his escape, he pondered Gray upbringing, wondering what exact events had led Gray to murdering children for consumption purposes. He’d mentioned his deceased parents being hunters, but not much else. Perhaps he’d put them on a pedestal, become fixated with their history as hunters, and slowly but surely moved onto human quarry… but that was all speculation. Gray hadn’t been forthcoming with the exact reason for his madness.

Whatever the reason for Gray’s moral repugnance, Bill was determined to be the one to bring an end to it. He would get the man in jail, preferably onto death row. It was where he belonged. In fact, Bill was pretty sure there was no one else in existence who deserved the death penalty as much as Gray did. It wasn’t exactly common for even the worst of serial killers to kill and eat _children_.

To get what he wanted, Bill first had to escape this hellhole of a house. He was sure, in time, Gray _would_ slip up. He would enable Bill to escape. Bill just had to wait for his guard to waver.

He had a rough idea in mind. He needed to get his hands on something sharp, something he could use to cut through the chain. He would make the cut thin enough to be difficult to discern, then he would start another cut next to it to make a gap big enough to get the catch through. Only when he had Gray distracted would he snap the metal and slip free. He would have liked to slip free while Gray wasn’t in the house, but he doubted he’d be able to get out of the basement with that sturdy door in the way, and he wasn’t about to try traversing the sewer. He’d probably get lost and die down there. He figured starting a fire would be the best way to distract Gray, and with something metal that he could rub into the tiles and produce friction with, that would be easy enough to do.

It was a plan still in its infancy, rough and uncertain, but Bill found comfort in it. It got him through the days where he was made to watch Gray feast upon the remains of a child.

He played the part of the dutiful housewife, which seemed to be what Gray wanted. He cleaned, cooked, and sat quietly. He didn’t complain. When Gray told him he didn’t smile enough, he even started doing that too. It wasn’t long before Gray introduced him to the lounge room, where he would be made to sit next to Gray and watch comedy shows on a dreadfully old television. While sitting on that threadbare couch, Bill’s gaze would drift to the duffel bag Gray always deposited to the side of him, where Bill knew he kept several knives. Given a minute or so, he could have had one under his sleeve. He just had to wait, be patient. Eventually Gray would forget his presence and he would make a grab for one.

The letters Gray had drawn into his chest healed over the course of twelve visits. They turned a nasty red, scabbed over, and began to peel, and then slowly turned into thin, puckered white scars. With some dismay, Bill realised he would have Gray’s initials on him for the rest of his life. He would have Gray on him, and _in_ him until his dying day. He might be able to escape, but Gray had torn out a part of Bill and made it his own, and Bill knew he wouldn’t get it back. Not even with years upon years of therapy. It would always be Gray’s, but that was okay; Bill could learn to live with that. People had learned to live with far worse things. He could persevere. For the sake of Georgie and for the other children of Derry, he _had_ to.

So he waited. He got very good at it. He learned patience through necessity and no longer would the desperate need to flee surge through his body in one heavy, debilitating wave. Bill Denbrough always had been good at adjusting to difficult circumstances. He’d learned to live with his stutter and the resulting social isolation, and later he had learned to live with the deep cold that had invaded the Denbrough household, and he learned to live with this too. Once you’d learned to live in one awful circumstance, it got easier the next time you had to adapt.

If Gray suspected he was planning something, the man didn’t give any indication of it. He was happy with Bill’s compliance, enough that he didn’t seem to care to scrutinise the reason for it.

That was going to be his downfall.

* * *

When Gray dragged him into his lap during a showing of M*A*S*H, his hands sliding down to the small of Bill’s back, Bill had been sure of his position in Gray’s life.

He wasn’t so sure when Gray’s hand descended past the waistband of his skirt, groping at the slope of a buttock. Bill gasped and nearly leapt out of Gray’s lap, kept grounded only by Gray’s other arm, which was draped over his thighs. Bill’s face warmed as Gray’s hand explored, mapping out the expanse of his ass and thighs, periodically squeezing and kneading the flesh. Bill was active enough on his bike that his legs were well-toned and Gray seemed to appreciate that.

“So warm,” Gray murmured, his hot breath bringing goosebumps to Bill’s skin.

Bill, despite himself, found that he was getting hard. Gray was the sort of man he would have fantasied about had he known him under difference circumstances, and unfortunately, his body did not protest his attraction quite as strongly as his mind. He liked being touched like this, _liked_ it, and he hated himself for that. What sort of freak got off on being groped by their kidnapper?

Gray’s nails lightly grazed the inside of a thigh and Bill shivered, burying his face into Gray’s shoulder. Gray let his free hand slide up Bill’s body and cup the nape of his neck, fingers playing idly with the fine hairs there.

“Pretty little Billy," Gray murmured. His long fingers found Bill's underwear, which he began to breach.

Bill set his jaw. He didn’t protest. He needed to keep up the act, and anyway – it felt _good_ to be touched like this. The heat gathering in his crotch, filling out his skirt, was driving away the anxious itch on the surface of his skin and the panic bubbling in the back of his mind. For someone about to be raped, he was surprisingly relaxed. He supposed, compared to everything else that had happened to him under Gray’s care, this was a trifle.

He didn’t quite feel like he was there as Gray coiled his fingers around Bill’s cock. He began to stroke and Bill sunk into the sensation, melting into Gray’s chest. His eyes fluttered shut. He made soft, wanton sounds and he didn’t bother to stifle them, too distracted by this lovely, foreign feeling Gray was introducing him to. He'd never had someone touch him like this before.

It felt so good. He wanted to cry, but it felt so good. Gray stroked with unusual care, periodically driving his thumb against the sensitive ridge of his cock, but not often enough for it to become overwhelming. He had such big hands and they held all of Bill with ease. God forgive him, but Bill found his hips twitching into each stroke, seeking further pleasure.

Gray’s mouth found his neck, biting hard, and _that_ felt good too. He moaned softly. Gray bit until the skin broke and his hand stuttered on Bill’s cock, squeezing around the ridge and making Bill’s fingers and toes curl and his head spin. Every part of him felt hot. His cheeks, face, chest, neck – every part of him, and he hadn’t known one’s neck and chest could flush, but looking down at himself, he saw that was exactly what he was doing.

Gray carefully moved his hand to Bill’s face and tilted his head up, then leaned down and licked a sloppy line across Bill’s lips. It was at that moment that Bill found his climax, moaning softly against Gray’s lips and spilling into his hand. His thighs tensed and his body was wracked with shudders. When the spasms of pleasure had subsided, he sunk into Gray’s body, breathing hotly against Gray’s neck. Gray stroked his back and wiped his hand clean on the couch armrest.

“Keeping you was a good decision,” Gray murmured.

The guilt and shame would come later. Right now, Bill was simply tired.

Gray held him as the lethargy that followed orgasm sent him into a doze. It was surprisingly comfortable, lying on that couch with Gray, and he got better rest than he had in weeks while clutched in the man’s arms. They reminded him somewhat of his father’s arms, thick and strong and warm. Zack Denbrough had given the best hugs, once upon a time. He liked being held like this. He knew, distantly that he shouldn’t have, but he was in no state of mind to react appropriately to that knowledge.

Gray didn’t take him back to the basement when night arrived. He slid an arm under Bill’s legs and heaved him off the couch, carrying him upstairs and into a bedroom. It was dusty and cold and smelt strongly of mothballs, but this was still an improvement over the basement room. After securing the chain to a bed leg, Gray slid him beneath the covers and then crawled in after him, curling himself around Bill’s body, caging Bill with his limbs. His chin rested on the top of Bill’s head.

Gray fell asleep within minutes. It took Bill a little longer as the guilt and shame finally reared its head, but after weeks of cold, sleepless nights, slumber inevitably came for him too.

* * *

Bill couldn’t say how long he had been Gray’s prisoner. It could have been weeks, or months, or perhaps even… no, maybe not _years_ , but certainly weeks or months. He marked the passage of time by Gray’s appearances, and courtesy of Gray having to work odd hours as a performer and office clerk, these were not always reliable. Bill had initially tried keeping a tally of how often Gray visited him, but he found himself unable to sustain that when Gray decided to start taking him upstairs at night, keeping him from the cluster of lines he’d driven into the wall of the basement room with a nail. Not that he was complaining about his new sleeping quarters. Sleeping on anything that wasn’t hard and cold was a relief. Still, he would have liked to have some idea of how long he had been captive.

It at least _seemed_ a long time before he was finally permitted to sit in the lounge room on his own. Gray seated him on the couch, ensured he was chained to the floor, and went into the basement to... make children float, Bill supposed, though he didn’t like to acknowledge that unless he absolutely had to. He took his duffel bag with him, which threw a wrench into Bill’s plan. He would have to find some other means of acquiring a makeshift chisel.

The first time Gray left him, Bill had spent the subsequent hours sitting in a corner of the couch, as tense as a board. He’d thought it a test. Surely, if he so much as budged, Gray would leap out from some hiding place and punish him for perceived disobedience. He would accuse Bill of trying to escape and they would be back at square one. With this fear clinging to his mind, he spent a total of three Seinfeld episodes (one of Gray’s favourite shows) doing nothing but sitting in place, his hands white knuckled in his lap and his shoulders a rigid line. He could see his face reflected in the television screen and he was terribly pale.

Gray laughed at his display of anxiety when he emerged from the basement. He did not, however, indicate that Bill shouldn’t be nervous about being alone, and in fact appeared quite pleased with the development.

“Don’t worry, little buddy,” he said, scratching Bill behind the ear like a beloved dog. “I’ll never leave you for long.”

Bill couldn’t tell if that was a promise or a threat.

The next two occasions of Bill being left on his own were similarly uneventful. He sat quiet and tense until Gray returned. It started to become a relief when he did, as it meant Bill didn’t have to worry about being caught misbehaving anymore.

Bill knew he had to get ahold of himself; he’d been working towards being left on his own for a very long time and finally he had earned that privilege. He had to take advantage while Gray was still willing to provide it. It was hard, however, when Gray had made it painfully clear what he would do to Bill if he found Bill misbehaving. The initials on his chest still throbbed on the odd occasion and sometimes, during the coldest of nights, his bones would ache in reminder of the time he’d been thrown down the stairs. If he tried to escape and Gray caught him, he didn’t doubt the consequences would be far worse than any he’d faced so far. Perhaps it would be what finally prompted Gray to make him _float_.

But only if he was caught.

If he was quiet, if he was careful, if he was _brave_ , he could find something to wear down his chain with. He would be one step closer to being free of this hellhole.

During Gray’s fifth departure, Bill fought against his self-preservation instinct and fear. His trepidation would only grow if he put it off, he told himself, and he might miss his window of opportunity if he hesitated for too long. It was only a matter of time before Gray started bringing Bill down into that basement with him, after all. The cooking was only the first stage.

The cold of the room didn’t prevent Bill from developing a thin sheen of sweat on his skin. He rubbed his slick palms on his thighs and wiped moisture away from his hairline with a sleeve. Once a little less wet, he cast his eyes around the room so fast and nervously that he could have been mistaken for a humming bird. Nothing stuck out to him as useful. It became very tempting to resume watching television as he heard Gray moving downstairs, undoubtedly doing some meat preparation, but Bill fought it down; he’d already started. He couldn’t back out now.

Wetting his lips, Bill very slowly slid off the edge of the couch and to the floor boards, waiting in tense anticipation for Gray to emerge to punish him. When no such thing happened, Bill slid his way across the room and to the television, reaching for the cabinet it was situated upon. The doors made the softest of clicking sounds as he pulled it open and Bill tensed, listening hard for Gray. Once again, Gray did not make an appearance. Having made it this far without being caught, a trickle of confidence returned to Bill. He indulged in a private smile.

Riding on this newfound bravery, he slipped a hand into the cabinet and felt around, squinting through the dark at the contents. There were cassette tapes, video tapes, bits of paper, a book or two, and absolutely nothing of use to Bill. He closed the cabinet door with nothing to show for his efforts. Determined not to let the evening be a loss – he’d had too many of those lately – Bill decided to retreat to the couch and search beneath each cushion, checking to see if anything had slipped from Gray’s pocket and through a crack. 

He found a coin (useless), some sort of clown gadget (also useless), a lot of dust (especially useless), and finally, a paperclip. Cursing his luck, Bill carefully pushed the cushions back into place and sat on his haunches, considering what to do next. On a whim, he grasped the end of the couch and lifted it as quietly as he could, seating it on his knees so he could grope around underneath it.

Like with the couch cushions, he found very little of use among the dust and trash. The only item that seemed like it would come in handy at some point was a piece of wire. It was thin, coarse, and blood splatted; wire that had undoubtedly been used to tie a victim at one point. Bill carefully twisted it into a tight coil and slid it up his shirtsleeve. He shoved the coin up there as well, just in case he could find a use for it.

Bill next attempted to reach the kitchen from where he was chained. Quite predictably, he wasn’t able to. Gray hadn’t been sloppy in deciding the length of his chain. He was never able to reach every wall in a room. In the case of the lounge room, the only wall he could reach was the back-most one, and unfortunately, that put him out of reach of what little furniture was in the room. He unhappily slumped his way back to the couch, where he waited patiently until Gray returned from the basement and joined him in watching yet another episode of Seinfeld.

He could smell the blood on Gray, so thick that it clogged up Bill’s nostrils. It was on Gray’s hands, stuck under his nails. Whatever he had been doing in that basement, it had been messy work. Bill flinched when Gray reached for him and smudged some of that filth on his cheek.

“Do me a favour, Billy.” He swiped some hair behind Bill’s ear. “Get between my legs.”

Bill’s breath stuttered out of him. “H-huh?”

“Blowjob. I want one. I’m worked up!” He slid his thumb along Bill’s jaw, gently directing Bill’s gaze to his crotch. His slacks were tented.

Bill’s ears began to burn. “I d-d-don’t think I’d bu-b-be any good at that, Mr. Gray.”

“You don’t have to be good for me to like it!” Gray insisted. “You want to make me happy, don’t you, Billy? I know you do.” He spread his legs. “C’mon. Will you make ‘ol Gray happy?”

That Gray was asking him, asking for his permission, confused Bill. He could just as easily force Bill to give him what he wanted. “You could just…” Bill shrugged. “Make me do it.”

“I could,” agreed Gray, smiling. “But I _want_ you to _want_ to do it.”

“Oh.” Bill shuffled a little in place, glancing at the spot between Gray’s legs. The duffel bag was back in its usual place and it would be within reach of him if he was down on the floor. He could grab something more substantial than wire or a coin while Gray was distracted. “I’ll… I’ll d-do it,” he decided. Giving Gray a blowjob was a small price to pay for the possibility of escape.

Gray unbuckled his belt. Full of jumping nerves, Bill slid down to the floor, between his knees, and watched Gray’s bloodied hands unzip his trousers and pull out his cock. It was long, thick, and veiny. Much bigger than his own, he noted. He doubted he would be able to fit it in the back of his throat like Richie said porn stars did. If he tried that, he’d end up vomiting.

Bill shuffled closer, eyeing the duffel bag in his peripheral vision. Gray hadn’t bothered to close it. His knives were on full display. There had to be one in there small enough for Bill to hide up a sleeve.

One of Gray’s hands came to rest on the nape of his neck. He was pulled forward, Gray’s cock jostling against his cheek before he reached for it with his mouth. Still eyeing the duffel bag, he parted his lips and gave the shiny head a kitten lick, prompting Gray to let out one long exhale.

“Come on, little buddy,” said Gray dazedly, his voice low and husky. It sent all the blood in Bill’s body to his crotch, much to Bill’s chagrin. “I need more than that.”

Bill coiled a shaking fist around the base of Gray’s cock, keeping it still so he could let it side into his mouth. The taste was of salt and musk. Not entirely unpleasant, if Bill was honest. He sucked gently, stroking on the base whenever he remembered the presence of his hand.

“Use your tongue,” Gray instructed breathlessly, and Bill did, gliding it around the underside of Gray’s shaft as he bobbed and sucked.

He had no delusions about him being any good. Without practice, he had to be awkward, stumbling, but Gray appeared to be enjoying himself all the same. Perhaps he liked Bill’s inexperience. He certainly seemed to be getting worked up over it.

Gray’s hand drifted to Bill’s hair, curling around a handful of the auburn strands and guiding Bill into each swallow of his cock. Bill rubbed the flat of his tongue against the ridge, like Gray had done to him, and was rewarded with an elongated, guttural sound from Gray. He felt some satisfaction at that.

When he glanced up, he saw Gray’s head had lulled back and his eyes had fluttered shut. He was nearing orgasm. It was now or never, Bill figured, so he gave Gray’s cock one more suck and shot his free hand out toward the duffel bag, groping blindly until his fingers touched something small and smooth and metal. He slipped it into his sleeve without giving it any further physical examination. He didn’t have enough time to do so, as Gray’s eyes shot open and he hunched over Bill, pulling him down onto his cock as he spilled himself into Bill’s mouth. Bill choked and spluttered, tears gathering in his eyes and drool accumulating around his lips, but Gray didn’t let up until he had finished emptying himself into Bill.

The moment he was free to do so, Bill drew back and coughed into a fist, dislodging the come in his throat. It was thick and bitter and stuck itself to the inside of his mouth. He had to swallow repeatedly in order to get it to go down, and even then, the taste lingered on his tongue. He expected it would stay there for a while.

Gray sat slumped in place for several minutes. When finally he seemed to have recovered from his climax, he tucked his cock back into his trousers, zipping himself up. Gray leaned down once he was presentable and swiped his hand through Bill’s hair.

“You have some hidden talent there, Billy! Such a lovely, lovely mouth.”

Bill forced himself to smile. A small, tentative smile, but a smile all the same. The weapon he’d grabbed was cold against his forearm.

“I’ll let you show me what other talents you have, soon enough.” Gray dropped low enough to run the tip of his nose through Bill’s hair, breathing in the scent of him. “But later. Much later. I have work tomorrow and you are due for the basement.”

“D-do I have to?” he asked, just to put on a show. There was nothing he wanted more than to return to the basement. He could start chipping away at his restraints while down there.

Gray heaved him up from the floor by his armpits, forcing him to stand. Bill clamped his arms down against his sides to prevent his thievery from being discovered.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” said Gray, unclipping Bill’s chain from its hole and wrapping it around his forearm, as per usual. Bill made a show of pouting. “Now, now, Billy, I’ll be back tomorrow! You won’t have to wait long for me.”

Bill nodded, dropping his eyes. Gray patted the crown of his head and led him to the basement stairs, guiding Bill into descending the steps first. He was always nervous when Gray made him walk in front. The pain of slamming into the cement would fly to mind and his heart would thunder in his chest, sending adrenaline racing through his veins. His muscles always turned rigid and unpliable, so tense that one could have broken wood on them, and it made every step a strange kind of torture. Only when he reached the landing would he relax.

His concern was probably unfounded; Gray didn’t inflict bodily harm unless he ‘earned’ it, but his hind brain refused to register that. Like an animal that had been mistreated, his responses were purely instinctual, involuntary. There was nothing he could do to stifle them.

Gray slid a hand to the small of Bill’s back and pressed him the rest of the way into the basement. Once in his usual corner of his room, Gray guided the chain into its hole and left. Bill remained sitting on his blankets until Gray’s movements through the house were no longer audible. Grinning, he reached into his sleeve, withdrawing the piece of metal he had thieved, and was thrilled to find it was a tiny kitchen knife. Nice and sharp. Perhaps used on Gray’s smaller victims… he didn’t let himself linger on that thought, throwing his leg out from under his blankets and applying the blade to the first chain link. He started sawing from the inside, which proved difficult, but he didn’t want his progress to be visible, and working from the inside out would make the break in the chain harder to notice.

He worked until he reached a quarter of the way, then stowed the blade in his blankets. He needed to grab some sleep for tomorrow. Gray would undoubtedly have come up with some new way to torment him by then.

* * *

Gray started him cleaning the lounge room the following day. Gray sat and watched television while he crawled across the floorboards and scrubbed away as much muck as he could. For this task, Gray had given him his usual cloth, brush, and cleaning sprays, but had added a bucket with a mop and some floor polish. It was going to be difficult to get the floor in presentable enough condition for that polish.

His skirt became so filthy by the third day of cleaning that Gray made him pull on a new one. This one was shorter, darker, and looked like it might have belonged to a school girl prior to being given to Bill. Bill shuddered at that thought. He hoped it hadn’t been on a corpse before being given to him.

When he wasn’t cleaning or cooking, Gray would let him watch whatever television he fancied or take a bath. Either one or the other. He usually had a hard time picking, but the desire to be clean often won out. When he did elect to watch television, he would turn to the news to catch up with current events. Gray didn’t let him watch long, but he could usually get in ten minutes or so before Gray told him to find a different channel. He hoped, desperately, to see something on his disappearance being aired, but he never did. Perhaps his parents had already decided he was dead. He found that possibility very disheartening.

It wouldn’t have surprised him to hear they had only made one broadcast about him before giving up. His parents hadn’t demonstrated concern for his well-being since losing their first son. It seemed only natural that they would give up on Bill without much of a fight. His friends, though… they would be looking for him. He was sure of that. Richie, and Mike, and Eddie, and Stan, and Beverly, and Ben – they wouldn’t give up until they had searched every inch of this town. 

The thought that someone out there was still looking for him, even if it wasn’t his parents, made him smile. It was one of the few reminders of his former life that he allowed himself to think about. Most reminders depressed him. But not the thought that he was in the minds of his friends. He clung onto the idea that he would one day get to see them again. With the little knife he had pilfered, he was _so close_.

Gray, meanwhile, was becoming complacent. He hadn’t severely harmed Bill since Bill had refused to cook for him. He certainly hit Bill on the odd occasion, or gripped his hair too tight, or bit him, but he hadn’t tortured him. Compliance avoided him that misery. He would take a few bruises and bites over being sliced into with a box cutter any day.

He hadn’t killed anyone in a while either. Bill supposed there were only so many kids one could abduct in a month without attracting unwanted attention. This was only a temporary pause to his activities. He would resume soon, and Bill intended to escape before that happened.

“You know, Billy,” said Gray one quiet, dreary afternoon. “You’ve been here three months. Time just flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?”

That information made Bill a little ill. Three months. Three months of his life were gone. He said nothing.

Gray petted his hair and drew him into his lap, as he was wont to do these days.

“When we reach quarter year, we should do something special, hm? Do you have any ideas, Billy?”

Bill had a few. None that Gray would take into consideration, anyway. “No,” he said dully. His mood had plummeted in response to Gray’s announcement. He didn’t much feel like talking.

“No?” Gray clucked his tongue. “How about I let you go outside? How about that?”

Bill’s heart stuttered in his chest. He looked up at Gray, who appeared completely sincere.

He’d thought Gray was getting used to his presence, but he didn’t know it was to _this_ extent.

“Wh-wait, really?” he asked, trying and failing to keep his voice steady.

“There’s a deli that I like…” said Gray, trailing off. He examined Bill through half-lidded eyes. His thumb stroked Bill’s shoulder.

“I’d – I’d like to go there,” he said quickly, with a hope he wasn’t quite able to smother. “I l-love deli food!”

Gray barked a laugh and Bill grimaced, withdrawing slightly. “I’m just kidding, little buddy," said Gray, his laughter dissolving into snickers. "Don’t look so excited. I’d take you out back.”

“Oh.” Bill dropped his eyes, his face warm with embarrassment. Of course Gray wouldn’t take him beyond Neibolt. It would be too risky. “I knew that,” he mumbled, twisting his fingers into his skirts. He felt like a right idiot for thinking Gray would ever let him beyond Neibolt, but he found consolation in the fact he would soon be getting out anyway. It would have been far easier to go to the deli with Gray and have someone recognise him, which he was sure was exactly what would have happened, but only the truly lucky had that sort of thing happen to them, and lady luck hadn’t been on Bill’s shoulder at any point in his life.

“Sure you did.” Gray smiled knowingly. He reached up, cupping Bill’s face in hand. “You’ll like my backyard. It has sunflowers.”

“Yeah,” Bill agreed, rather listlessly.

“Aw, don’t be grumpy.” Gray closed his fingers over one of Bill’s cheeks, giving it a pinch. “Mister Robert Gray is going to make you very happy when that day comes. You’ll forget all your troubles.”

Bill didn’t quite know what he was referring to, and he didn’t want to find out. Bill never much enjoyed Robert’s idea of ‘happiness’.

He shifted atop Gray’s thighs, taking note of the hardness between them. Gray was probably going to want his mouth before the evening was through. That was fine by him; he found giving the guy blowjobs easier than conversing with him. As Gray tended to leave or take him to bed after making use of Bill, sometimes he initiated sexual activity just to end the night faster.

As though sensing Bill’s thoughts, Gray dropped a hand to Bill's thigh, squeezing the ample flesh through his skirt. He’d actually lost a few pounds since arriving at Neibolt, but he was still reasonably fit. Exercising in the basement room prevented him from losing too much muscle.

Gray’s teeth found his neck, dragging along the pale column. That hurt a little. Most things Gray did hurt. Gray’s gentleness was always interspersed with instances of pain, like the man didn't know how to be gentle enough not to hurt.

“Looks like you want to make me happy,” said Gray, and Bill didn’t respond to that, staring up and away. Gray pushed him to the ground, between his legs. “Alright, Billy. Do your stuff.”

Bill obediently let his mouth fall open. He closed his eyes. He found that pretending Gray was someone else made the whole experience easier to deal with, and he had a hard time doing that if he was looking at Gray’s public hair. The person he brought to mind didn’t have ginger public hair. He almost felt bad about it, but it was always _Richie_ he imagined. Richie with his big brown eyes and wild black curls, with his long limbs and strong arms, with his stubble and goofy smile. Thinking of Richie in these moments gave him comfort.

Richie, of course, would never be as rough as Gray was. He wouldn’t twist his fingers into Bill’s hair hard enough to sting, nor push him down to the hilt of his cock and cause Bill to gag and tear up. He wouldn’t hurt Bill like that – not unless Bill asked for it, anyway, and Gray never asked him what he wanted. Gray liked what he liked and he assumed Bill did too.

Richie’s hands were warm. They would be warm in his hair, smooth on his skin. They wouldn’t have the callouses Gray’s did from hunting and preparing meat. The sounds he made would be soft and encouraging. He wouldn’t growl or laugh or compliment Bill in that awful, cloying way Gray did. ‘Such a good boy, Billy. Such a good, lovely boy’. The taste of his cock wouldn’t make Bill feel faintly ill and ashamed. He wouldn’t make Bill hate himself for getting hard.

If – _when_ he got out of here, he promised himself he would admit his feelings to Richie. After facing _this_ , the prospect of rejection wasn’t so daunting anymore. There was nothing that could be worse than this.

His jaw ached a little when Gray was done. He swallowed, as per usual, and let Gray lift him off the floor and carry him toward the stairs.

So they were to sleep in the bedroom tonight. That meant he wouldn’t be able to work on the chain. A little frustrating, but after giving a blowjob, Bill was too tired to provide more than a meagre complaint. 

He was tucked up under Gray’s chin, his arms pinned to his sides by Gray’s. Gray's long legs crossed over Bill’s and kept them pinned firmly to the mattress. Gray never let him sleep in any other position while upstairs.

“Good night, little buddy,” said Gray.

“Good night,” said Bill, as was expected of him.

Gray smiled against his scalp, and it wasn’t long before his breaths evened out and he fell asleep. Bill followed suit a short time after.

* * *

Bill awoke to the sound of splintering wood. He shot up the moment this information registered, full of panic, and almost fell off the edge of the mattress in his haste to flee the source of the sound. The chain ensured he didn’t get far, leading him to instead smack his shoulder into the headboard and hang over the edge of the bed.

Gray greeted him with a smile from the floor. He was holding a drill. A drill he was currently using to bore a hole into the bedroom floor.

Pushing the last dredges of sleep away, Bill stared at Gray in bewilderment.

“Y-you’re…” He fought to get the words out. Adrenaline always brought on his stutter. “You’re drilling a hole.”

Gray extended him a broad smile. “Since you’re going to be staying up here more often,” he explained. “I’ll be placing a hole here too.”

“Oh,” said Bill, taking a moment to process this information. He was steadily becoming more awake, more alert, and after some time of observing Gray work, it dawned on him just what this development meant.

If he was stuck in this bedroom, he wouldn’t be able to work on the chain.

Gray had grown complacent. Not enough to enable an easy escape, unfortunately, but enough to be an inconvenience to Bill’s plans. He’d been playing his part a little too well. If he wanted to spend his nights in that basement, he was going to need to rectify his mistake.

Bill hesitated for a long while. He squirmed on the edge of the bed, wrung his hands, and chewed on the edge of his bottom lip. He didn’t want to proceed with his plan. He knew, however, he would only end up remaining in the house longer if he didn’t, and the longer he stayed at Neibolt, the more likely it was Gray would one day return with a child.

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself and stood. Gray’s eyes flicked to him.

“I want a bath,” he announced.

Gray looked bemused. “Later.”

“Now,” Bill insisted. “I want a bath now.”

"Later," said Gray again.

"Now," said Bill back, forcing his voice to a shout.

Gray’s lips pursed into a thin line as he turned to Bill. His expression had grown stormy. “What are you playing at, Billy? Is this some kind of game?” He set the drill aside, his attention wholly on Bill now. “Because if it is, I don’t _like_ it.”

“I-I-I-“ Bill stammered uselessly. He gestured to the door, hoping it would be enough to convey his desire.

Gray rose. He seemed _much_ taller and _much_ bulkier when he was angry.

“Spit it out, little buddy. Come on.”

“I…” Bill curled his hands into fists, his nails biting into his palms. His heart was thudding wildly in his chest. “I want a bath, and i-if you don’t give me o-one, I won’t c-clean or cook.”

Gray was silent for one long, tense moment. He stared at Bill, unblinking, his eyes seeming almost orange under the golden glow emitted from the ceiling light. Then, very slowly, he approached Bill.

“Alright, little buddy,” he said, his voice saccharine sweet. He removed the padlock from the chain, which he had wrapped around a foot of the bed, and tugged Bill in the direction of the door. “No need to get upset. I’ll give you your bath.”

Bill allowed Gray to guide him out of the room with growing dread. His dread grew exponentially when Gray started filling the tub, smiling warmly at Bill as he did. He didn’t like that smile. It promised nothing good.

For a long while, the only sound between them was that of their breaths. Gray’s was steady and calm, while Bill’s was short and shallow. He shifted restlessly on the spot. He didn’t dare move from his position, least he anger Gray more than he already had.

Once the tub was full, Gray turned on him and divested him of his clothes, ripping them off fast enough to snap the skirt zipper and leave hot welts on Bill's skin. The moment Bill was nude enough to enter the water, Gray heaved him off the floor and threw into the tub. Bill landed at the bottom with a thud and scrambled for leverage as the water rose up around him.

“Let’s get you clean,” said Gray, and that was all the warning he received before Gray grabbed a handful of his hair and pushed his head beneath the water.

He’d expected to be dunked, just like Gray had done during his first bath. But Gray didn’t let up. He held Bill under the water even as he thrashed and tore his nails into Gray’s wrists, drawing bloody welts into the pallid skin; even as his vision began to darken around the edges; even as his movements weakened with approaching asphyxiation. Bill's lungs burned. His throat was convulsing, fighting against the urge to breathe in water. His head was throbbing so hard that it was as though someone was playing the drums in his skull.

He was _dying_ , and over something so _stupid_.

It was a long time before Bill finally fell still. His nails dropped away from Gray's bloodied skin. The water started to calm.

And then finally, _finally_ , Gray pulled him from the water.

He coughed and spluttered and Gray dragged him into his lap, stroking his back as he drew in desperate breaths of precious oxygen. A violent shaking wracked his body. He was like a fish on an embankment, slippery and quaking in Gray’s strong arms.

“Did you enjoy your bath, Billy?” asked Gray sweetly.

The asphyxiation had deprived Bill of all his strength. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak, and nor did he have enough function in his arms to push Gray away as a form of protest. He simply remained shivering against his chest, periodically coughing up bath water. Gray nosed into the side of his neck and smiled.

“Let me ask, Bill,” he said, his teeth grazing Bill’s skin with each word. “Are you going to be demanding a bath again?”

Bill coughed feebly in response.

“Come on, give me an answer.” Gray lightly dragged his nails down Bill’s back, just enough to cut through the rivulets of water running down it. “Or I may decide you need another lesson.”

Through great will, Bill managed to shake his head. He coughed some more water onto Gray’s shoulder.

Gray chuckled and gave him an approving pat on the ass. “That’s what I thought.”

When it came time to leave, Gray didn’t take him to the bedroom. He instead escorted Bill to the basement and told him ‘he wouldn’t be returning to the bedroom until he learned some manners’. He left Bill alone with his knife, and that had been worth the pain and humiliation of the near-drowning.

Bill retrieved his knife and got to work. He was so close.

* * *

He had done it. With just a little pressure, a section of his chain would break and he would be able to slip free. Bill stared at his work with growing glee, his thumb smoothing over the ridges of the cuts. It was early morning. Gray would be arriving any minute now. The moment he heard the locks being unfastened, he would scream at the top of his lungs. Gray would come running, no doubt.

First, he needed to start a fire. He found he could do so by rubbing the knife hard into the quilt, against the piece of twisted wire he had thieved. But it took a considerable amount of time to get the fire going. He needed to do it now if he wanted to create the fire before Gray arrived. He had no choice. He was sure, though, that he wouldn’t have to wait long after making it for Gray to arrive. Gray had promised him that he would be coming before work and Gray was generally a man of his word. At least where visits were concerned, anyway.

He brought a section of his quilt close and set the knife between a crack of the tiles, over the wire, then began to rub. His muscles strained. An ache quickly formed in his shoulder, which then developed into a burn. To sustain a motion like this for more than a minute or two was painful, but he grit his teeth and continued through it. It had to be done.

He wasn’t sure how long it took for the friction to produce embers. Long enough to wreak havoc on his arm, that was for sure. He released the knife the moment he was sure the embers would take and sat back on his haunches, giving his shoulder a roll. His hand ached faintly when he fisted it. He’d done a number on the tendons in his arms. They weren’t as bad off as the muscles, though, which felt like someone had taken sandpaper to them.

Once his fingers had recovered some functionality, he leaned down to blow gently on his handiwork, prompting it to turn into small, flickering flames. Bill then threw his ankle hard enough into the tiles to dislodge the section of chain he had loosened. It went skittering across the floor, a tiny lump of metal that signified his freedom. With a grin, Bill slipped his ankle bracelet free of the chain and stood, marvelling at the absence of the chain.

He’d done it. He’d really fucking done it.

Bill returned to his fire. He cut the blanket into sections to moderate it, just in case Gray came later than he was expecting. He waited patiently, sitting cross-legged on the floor like a primary schooler. It was the only way he could sit without getting too much tile on his thighs.

A thudding came from upstairs. Bill shot up in a flash, coming to stand by the door. He began to scream. At this sound, the thudding came faster, followed by the harried sound of metal being drawn across metal. Then more thudding, and Bill managed to leap out of the way just as Gray came barrelling into the room. He looked at Bill, and then the fire, his eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline. As he went to stomp it out, Bill rushed out of the room, up the stairs, grinning as he approached the landing.

It took Gray a moment to realise what he was doing and follow, but a moment was all that Bill needed. He threw himself past the threshold, slammed the door shut, and drew one of the bolts across. For extra security, he even activated one of the padlocks. He’d just managed to finish padlocking Gray inside when the door shuddered violently against his hands, moved by a great force beyond it.

Gray must have been slamming himself into the wood.

“You little brat,” he heard Gray hiss, his voice perfectly audible despite the door between them. “You better start running, because when I get my hands on you- oh, you’re going to regret this!”

He jumped back from the door. Out of practicality, rather than fear. He didn’t want to be nearby should Gray manage to break through. “Go fuck yourself, Gray,” he snarled, turning on his heels and heading for the exit.

Gray continued to bellow after him. The strikes he gave the door seemed to shudder through the whole house. “I’m coming, brat! I’ll make you float! I’m going to get out of here; you know I am! I’ll cut my way out through the fucking wood if I have to!”

Bill was shaking. He took several deep breaths and reached for the front door, his palms sweaty as he curled them around the handle. He gave it a twist, pushed, and then- it didn’t budge. He tried again and once again he met resistance. It took him a few moments to realise this was because Gray had put a padlock on the door as well.

 _He must have done it after he started taking me upstairs_ , Bill thought dazedly. He fumbled uselessly with the handle some more before glancing about for an alternate exit. A window would be his best bet. He hadn't seen many from the outside of the house, but there had to be some, right? He turned and ran for the opposite side of the house, leaping past the door that was shuddering on its hinges. He frantically went from room to room, glancing to the back most wall in search of an escape route. His panic grew into hysteria with each windowless room he encountered. Why the hell had someone built a house like _this_?

He needed to get out. _He needed to get out_.

“You’re gonna float, Billy boy,” Gray crowed from the basement. “I’m going to get you!”

Bill coiled his fingers around his shirt, over his pounding heart, and forced himself to calm down and _think_. He needed a key. He was sure Gray would have left one lying around somewhere –

The duffel bag! It had to be in there! Grinning with renewed energy, Bill raced into the kitchen, skidding to a halt before the kitchen table. He was relieved to find the duffel bag exactly where he thought it would be.

Bill dropped to his knees and pulled the zip back. Reaching inside, he started throwing aside knives and packaged meat and Gray’s ridiculous clown outfit and various kinds of utensils. He let them skitter across the floor, gathering in uneven piles. He didn’t care about the mess he was making. It wasn’t he who would have to clean it up this time.

At the bottom, he found not one key, but _three_. He gathered them all into his shaking hands and bolted back to the front door, where he proceeded to shove each key into the padlock with unnecessary force. He was shaking so badly that he dropped them twice. He almost sobbed with relief when finally he heard a click. Bill yanked the padlock down, pulled the latch across, and threw open the door. His first steps out into chilly morning air almost had him screaming for joy.

He grinned. Tears streamed from his eyes.

He was going home. Finally, he was going home.

He leapt down the steps, stumbled his way through the front garden, and swerved around the rusted fencing out front. His bare feet touched the foot path. It was icy cold and nothing had ever felt so welcoming. With glee bubbling up in his chest, he started to run down the street, toward the town and the wonderful people waiting within. Toward his freedom. Gray was going to rue the day he was born when Bill reached the police station.

He must have looked ridiculous in his skirt and blouse. He didn’t care, though. There hadn’t been an opportunity to change. It was a small humiliation compared to the others he had experienced recently.

The birds were singing. It was a heartening sound.

Bill ran until his lungs gave out on him, then paused, took several deep breaths, and resumed running. The end of the street seemed a lot farther away when you were running toward it from imprisonment. When it was finally within his sights, he moved faster, his feet slapping the stone, red and raw from pounding over rough terrain. A five-minute run away, he knew there was a gas station. He would stumble his way over to the clerk and ask them to call the police. And perhaps an ambulance too. As Gray scarcely provided him with food and water, he had to be malnourished and dehydrated and weak. It was a miracle he was able to run at all.

The sign for Kansas Street peeked out at him from behind trees. He grinned. When he heard an engine growling, he grinned even wider. Other people, people who weren’t Mister Gray-!

And then he realised the sound was coming from behind him.

He turned his head, looking over his shoulder. A black Bentley.

All the breath was driven out of Bill’s lungs by the sight. He resumed running, going even faster than before. He could see the town on the horizon.

But Gray was faster. He passed Bill and came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street. Bill froze. He surveyed his surroundings for an alternate exit, considered Route 2 for a fraction of a second, and started toward it. Gray stepped out of his car. Bill heard it slam shut so hard that it must have rocked the entire vehicle. He was moving fast, much faster than Bill with those damned long legs of his, and panic surged through Bill’s body, deprived him of all thought that wasn’t _run_.

He felt a strong hand curl around the back of his shirt and he didn’t have enough air in his lungs to scream.

“I told you, Billy,” said Gray, heaving his writhing, flailing body into his arms, dragging him bodily toward the car. “I told you I would get you.”

Bill tried to scream. The only sound that came out was soft and hoarse.

Gray laughed.

“Don’t waste your breath, little buddy. You’ll be doing plenty of that _later_.”

He didn’t pull Bill into the car. Instead he threw him to the ground, his knees crushing Bill into the asphalt, and grabbed him by the back of his head. The force with which he smashed Bill’s temple into the road sent him slamming into unconsciousness.


	4. Fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! And quite the long one, too. This one gets particularly dark, so there's your warning for that. It's also almost 14k, so quite long. I was gonna split it into two parts, but since it's taken me almost half a month to update... figure I'll just post it all in one go.

Bill awoke slowly, groggily, his head throbbing and his mouth painfully dry. Forced unconsciousness was always a hard thing to awaken from. It left one dizzy and disorientated. The moment Bill peeled his eyes open, however, this dizziness and disorientation receded.

He was in Neibolt's basement, and he was on a hook.

The hook wasn’t embedded in him as it was Gray’s other victims, and nor did a noose encircle his neck; instead, Gray had bound his wrists in thick loops of rope and attached that rope to a low-hanging hook. He must have been hanging for some time as his arms ached from his hands right down to his shoulders. All but his fingers hurt, which had gone numb from a lack of circulation. 

Fear grew in him as his situation slowly registered. Then a deep, painful sense of failure descended.

He had gotten out, had seen the bright blue skies, heard the birds twittering, felt the sun on his back and the wind in his hair, and Gray had still caught him. Freedom had been a five-minute run away.

He cried, then. His eyes were quick to turn red and sore. There were so many tears in him he felt he might drown in them and wished hysterically that he would, because that would have been better than whatever Gray had in store for him. He cried so hard that he choked on his sobs, the wetness dropping down his chin and soaking into his shirt.

He thought, childishly, that he wanted to go home. He wanted to go home. He wanted his mum and dad. He wanted his friends. He wanted his bedroom. He wanted to go home.

The thud of footsteps interrupted his sobbing. Through blurry vision, he watched the tall, dark outline of Gray descend the stairs. In anticipation of what was coming, he cried harder and faster, burying his face in his shoulder as best he could. He didn’t want Gray to see how low he’d brought Bill.

“Aw, Billy.” Gray approached. Bill tensed as the man reached out, expecting violence, but Gray merely caught him by the chin and brought them face to face. A small, genial smile was on his lips. “Why’d you have to go and ruin things, huh? We were having such a good time!”

Bill sniffed. Gray wasn’t expecting a reply, so he didn’t voice one. He couldn’t have forced anything through his painfully tight throat anyway.

“See, now I have to teach you a lesson.” Gray wagged a finger in his face, clucking his tongue. “I don’t want to, but I have to, Billy. You understand, don’t you? Of course you do. Tough love and all that.”

Bill squeezed his eyes shut. He heard Gray chuckle and felt Gray’s hands on his waist, which was promptly divested of his skirt. It fell down his legs and over his knobbly knees, pooling at his feet. His underwear was next and Bill’s heart raced as those too fell to the floor. He watched Gray kick them out of the way with growing dread.

“Do you know how naughty children were punished when I was a boy?” Gray moved behind him. Bill couldn’t see where he was going. He couldn’t manoeuvre himself around far enough to look over his shoulder. “Come on, Billy. I asked you a question.”

Bill sniffed again. His cheeks were wet and sore. “Fuck you,” was all he managed, which, by the sound of Gray’s growl, was not what the man had wanted to hear.

“We’ll get to that,” said Gray, which sent Bill’s heart into his throat.

_Oh God, he’s gonna- he's really gonna-_

But he heard Gray picking something up, and that monetarily distracted him from his racing thoughts.

Gray stepped back into view. He was holding a long piece of wood, about a centimetre in thickness.

“Recognise this?”

Of course he did. While he hadn't experienced its sting, he’d seen enough media with corporeal punishment to recognise a cane when he saw one. Relief fell over Bill; a caning was not what he had been expecting at all. If eight-year old’s all across 70's America could deal with this form of punishment, he – an eighteen-year-old, and one who had developed a decent pain threshold courtesy of Gray – could deal with it too. As long as Gray wasn’t going to use the box cutter on him again, he would be fine. He might not even cry.

Gray waved the implement through the air. It made a whooshing sound.

“Looks like you do,” said Gray with a grin. “Have you ever been caned before, Billy?”

“Get on with it,” Bill forced out, turning his face away from Gray. The tears had finally ceased, but the moisture still clung to his eyelashes.

“Eager! I like that. Little brats should know when they ought to be punished.” The cane descended, tapping gently between his thighs. It produced a slight sting even then. “Legs apart, Billy.”

Bill stubbornly kept them closed.

“Legs apart, or I’ll hit your cock with this.”

That got Bill moving, albeit with reluctance.

“I’m giving you ten of these. If you beg me, I might reduce that number to five. But you have to beg _very_ prettily for some mercy, Billy.”

Bill said nothing. Ten, five – he could deal with this. A little caning wasn’t anything to be afraid of. It wasn’t as though his father hadn’t taken a hand to his ass as a child. Never an implement, but how much worse could it be?

Gray moved to stand behind him. He gave Bill’s ass two taps with the implement, which prompted him to rise onto his toes.

Just ten strikes. He could do that. Easy. _Easy peasy lemon squeezy_ , Bill thought with a miserable hysteria. He would take the ten strikes and then it would be over, and Bill would cry a lot for a while, but the main punishment would be over and that was what mattered. He could do this.

Gray raised the cane. He heard it whistle through the air. It hit with a thwack that sent him rocking on his hook, his toes scrabbling across the cement. The pain wasn’t all what he had expected. It was sharp and intense, blotting out every other feeling in his body, sending his nerves into a screaming fit. This was not at all comparable to the corporeal punishment he had faced at home.

The cane came down again. This time he cried out, attempting to swing out of range. Gray must have had some means to raise the hook, as he felt himself suddenly become air borne, his arms screaming against the weight of his body.

Another strike. He cried out this time. He hadn’t managed to finish his cry before two more came down, harder and more painful than the previous. He was sobbing again. His vision blurred. His mouth was wide open but he was only managing soft, choking sounds that wanted to be a scream, but didn’t have the lung capacity to get there.

He was sure Gray had broken skin. Sure, if he looked down, that he would see blood slipping down his thighs in messy rivulets. He didn't feel anything but the throb of developing bruises, but he was sure the wounds were there, because how else could this be so painful?

Gray suddenly stopped, allowing him to fall back to the floor. He slumped there, sobbing hard, in so much pain that having a single comprehensive thought was impossible.

“Well, Billy?” asked Gray. “Do you want me to stop?”

“Yes,” he said, without thinking, babbling between sobs. “Yes, please, please stop! I can’t- I don’t-”

Gray’s hand found the slope of his buttock. It kneaded gently, which felt bad at first, and then worked itself into something pleasant and soothing.

“Please, what?” asked Gray. He tapped the cane on the ground. That almost had Bill spilling a fresh bout of tears.

“Please stop!”

“Be specific.”

“Please s-s-stop punishing me.”

Gray rubbed a little harder, his fingers delving between Bill’s cheeks. He didn’t have the presence of mind to care.

“And who are you asking? From the top, Billy.”

“Please stop puh-punishing me, Mr. Gray.”

“Since you asked so nicely…” Gray threw the cane. Bill watched it clatter to the floor with some relief. “But we’re not quite done yet, little buddy. We’re going to finish off this day _pleasantly_.”

Bill fought to regain some control over himself, choking back his sobs. He wiped his wet cheeks on his shoulder. The pain in his ass was horrendous. 

Gray leaned his face into the back of Bill’s head and nosed against his scalp, nuzzling into his hair. His hand drifted further down Bill's ass all the while, a long finger catching on the furl of Bill’s entrance. Bill jumped. He reflexively clenched, then cried out when this action resulted in a sharp agony.

“Don’t clench.” He heard shuffling, then something cool was applied to his skin, dripping down the inside of his leg. “You’ll make this more uncomfortable than it needs to be.”

Exactly what Gray was doing was slow to register. Maybe he just didn’t want to admit it. He’d thought Gray satisfied with blowjobs and hand jobs; he’d thought that would be all he was ever required to do, and now Gray had a slick finger spreading lubrication over his hole, readying to enter. His fear overtook the pain, but only briefly. It came crashing back as Gray slowly breached him.

He didn’t struggle. Maybe he should have. But he knew doing so would be pointless, would only hurt him further. There was a certain defeat in the way he slumped into Gray’s invading hands, and he stared blankly at the floor, too exhausted to shed anymore tears. Gray stroked the inside of him and he sniffed and whimpered, but that was all.

Gray coiled an arm around his chest. He held firm as his fingers stretched Bill, cold and dreadfully uncomfortable. His nails hurt. They scratched and stretched and Bill wondered just how he was going to take a cock if he could barely tolerate this.

“I’m going to make you feel incredible,” Gray murmured against the back of his head, his breath hot and heavy, bringing goosebumps to Bill’s flesh.

If any of his childhood innocence had survived these past three months, Gray was ripping it apart with each stroke of his fingers. Those fingers reached something deep inside of him, stroked insistently, and Bill set his jaw at the sparks of pleasure it produced. That was somehow worse than the pain.

“Feels good, hm?” Gray rubbed and rubbed, and Bill’s bottom lip trembled between his teeth, because it did. It felt so good that his entire body flushed and shivered.

Gray added even more lubricant, stroked even harder. Bill’s cock swelled between his legs.

 _What would your friends think of you if they saw you g_ e _tting hard for the guy holding you captive?_

He could just imagine Eddie’s sneering, disgusted face. _That’s how you get AIDs, Bill!_ Richie’s face flew to mind next, but he forced it away; he couldn’t bring himself to entertain what Richie would think of him if he were present.

Gray’s fingers abruptly withdrew. The last twinges of pleasure started to recede, and then were driven away entirely when Gray sunk deep into him without pausing to let Bill adjust. His jaw fell open. A single, shattered sound squeezed out, something between a whimper and a sob: a sound of utter despair.

“You’ve never done this before,” Gray breathed, slowly rocking his hips, and each time his public hair brushed Bill’s ass, a wave of agony would surge through him. “I can tell. You’re so tight it almost hurts – but it’s the good kind of hurt, so don’t worry.”

What Bill was feeling wasn’t the good kind. It was the kind that made you want to be someone else, anyone else, just so you wouldn’t have to feel it. The loss and humiliation and pain filled him so completely that there wasn’t room for anything else. That was all he was, in that moment. A being comprised of all the terrible things no one ever wanted to feel.

Gray grunted against his neck. He was picking up pace, his cock slamming into that part inside of Bill that made Bill keen. The humiliation increased tenfold. His hard cock slapped his stomach, and Bill though inexplicably of Mike, and wondered if he would ever want to touch Bill again, or if he would shudder at the thought as much as Bill shuddered under Gray’s hands. Maybe he would be able to feel Gray on his skin. Bill certainly felt as though Gray was invading his very pores, seeping into him to sully every inch of Bill he could reach.

Stan wouldn’t want to. He would look at him with pity, sympathy, but he wouldn’t want to touch. He wouldn’t want to get dirty. He, like Eddie, cared a whole lot about those things. He was sure Ben would agree. He valued cleanliness too, even if he was often forced out of his comfort zone by their adventures.

Maybe that was what Gray was trying to do with this. Sullying him to ruin him for anyone else. He was certainly doing a good job of it, thrusting hard enough to make Bill’s nerves sing and his head swim, to drive away any rational thought he had left. Hard enough that Bill knew he would never be able to be anything but what Gray was forcing him to be in this very moment.

He finished before Gray, sending come splattering to the cement. Gray followed after several brutal thrusts that he was sure tore something. A warm wetness spread within Bill. As Gray pulled out, it dripped slowly down the inside of his leg, right down to his ankle. There was a lot of it. It was warm and slimy and Bill wanted nothing more than to dig it out of him.

But Gray didn’t let him. He took a step back, adjusted his clothes, and clapped a hand on Bill’s shoulder.

“I’ll be back to give you a bath tomorrow, Billy.” He headed for the stairs. “I think a night floating ought to give you some time to _think_.”

The light was flicked off. Gray closed the door, and darkness fell.

Bill stared into it for a long time and tried to feel nothing. Nothing at all.

* * *

Gray bathed him, just like he said he would. Bill sat in the tub with his knees pulled to his chest and stared between them and into the water. He watched come and lubrication drift out of him. Gray’d had the courtesy to use a significant amount of lubrication before fucking him, though that may have been simply to avoid hurting himself. Bill couldn’t bring himself to dig it out like he’d wanted to the night before. He could barely stand the sight of his ass, let alone the feel of what Gray had done down there. After a while, he left his gaze drift elsewhere, deciding instead to count the cracks in each bathroom tile.

Gray whistled while he scrubbed the filth off Bill’s skin. Bill didn’t recognise the tune. Probably something old, though, judging by Gray's taste in music. He didn’t seem to like anything from the current century.

Bill didn’t do, nor say anything as Gray applied shampoo to his hair, and this seemed a fine arrangement for both of them. He worked it until it was suds and then poured water over Bill's head, washing the shampoo away. With that done, he tugged Bill out of the bath, into an awaiting towel, and started to pat him down. The moment he reached Bill’s buttocks, which were still smarting with pain, he smiled wide. Bill knew what that smile meant.

_You won’t be forgetting that anytime soon._

He wouldn’t be forgetting the events of the previous night for the rest of his life, in truth. Assuming his life wouldn’t end within the next few weeks or months.

Gray made sure he was good and dry before escorting him downstairs. He didn’t let Bill put clothes on.

“Clothes,” he told Bill. “Are for good boys.”

He tied Bill to the same hook as before, but this time he let Bill lower his arms. Not far enough to go anywhere, but far enough to prevent permanent circulation damage to his arms. Gray clearly knew how much the human body could withstand. He didn’t want his ‘little buddy’ to be disfigured in any way. That would make him a less appealing hole to fuck, Bill supposed.

Gray made use of him before leaving, which undid all his earlier work in the bathroom. He left Bill once more in the dark, and Bill focused his attention on any anything except the wet warmth in his belly.

* * *

He made some token efforts to fight. Punched at Gray when possible, struggled in his grip, kicked his legs, and flailed so violently on the hook that the whole house seemed to move in response. Nothing did him any good, however, and Gray could usually curb these shows of resistance by giving him a few strikes with the cane. Or by fucking him. That wasn’t quite as bad because it was usually over quick, whereas Gray would draw out the caning, but it still hurt, and it was humiliating on top of everything else.

His attempts to fight became few and far between as the days passed. It was hard to find the will to fight when you spent almost every waking hour alone in the dark and hanging from a hook. The solitude was soul rending. After what felt like a few months of standing in that empty dark (though it had to have been a week or two at most), Bill decided it was the worst kind of torture anyone had ever conceived of.

Even if he had been in any state of mind to fight, the ‘floating’ deprived him of what little strength he had. His arms were too tired to be any good for bludgeoning Gray and his legs were so often made to support his weight that they, too, were difficult to manoeuvre in the desired manner. He did try headbutting Gray a few times, but Gray would slap him hard across the back of the head when he did and the resulting dizziness would ensure he didn’t try that again. Not for a little while, in any case. The only thing he could really do to any degree of success was flail. Whether or not that made any difference to his circumstances was negligible. He didn’t think he’d be able to slip off the hook no matter how violently he swayed. Gray had ensured he was well-secured.

In the end, it became clear to Bill that struggling and fighting was only prolonging his misery. It got harder and harder to persuade himself to resist Gray with each day he spent in that cold, vast dark. This was what Gray wanted, he knew; he wanted Bill to be compliant, but Bill also knew fighting wasn’t getting him anywhere, and so his resistance lessened and lessened until there was none at all.

* * *

Gray didn’t visit him every day. To make up for that, sometimes he would visit twice a day. And sometimes, if he was feeling sentimental, he would stay the entire day with Bill and then thump his way upstairs and go to sleep. The inconsistency of his visits made it impossible for Bill to estimate how long he had been in the basement. Knowing wouldn't have changed his circumstances, but it would have given him something to focus on, at the very least. As it was, with no means to track the passage of time, nor keep himself entertained, he was starting to lose his mind. 

It got to a point where he saw and heard things that weren’t there. He heard Georgie’s voice whisper to him about paper boats, and rain, and floating. His yellow slicker flashed in Bill's vision. He saw Pennywise in the corner of the room, soaking wet and regarding him with interest, his makeup smudged and his eyes wide and frightening. He saw the vague shapes of his friends crowding around him and then blinked, and they were gone. They were perhaps the worst hallucination, because he so desperately missed the Losers Club.

These new developments frightened him. They frightened him enough that sometimes, despite everything Gray had done to him, he was relieved to see the man. The moment Gray entered the room, the hallucinations would recede and he would feel just that little bit more grounded. He was desperate for that feeling, and he was willing to take it even from a man like Gray. Gray kept those tenuous threads linking him to rationality together and he _couldn’t_ lose that security. 

His relief at Gray's presence only grew with each visit. As loathe as Bill was to admit it, Gray’s company came with perks that he desperately needed. As long as he was there, Bill would be clean and fed and hydrated, and sometimes he was even allowed to lie down. Comfort was something he came to associate with Gray, just as much as he associated pain with him. The humiliation and raping got easier to tolerate after the first few times, anyway, just like the other sexual activities had. It was a lot easier to deal with once you accepted it was inevitable.

When he didn’t have either Gray or the hallucinations to occupy him, he tended to sleep. Or rather, he blacked out for long periods. He didn’t dream. It was odd how his mind provided him with nothing but one great, vast black when he subsided into slumber, but that was probably for the best; with Gray as the sole permanent fixture in his life, his dreams probably wouldn’t have been pleasant ones.

Sleeping was a reprieve, even if he didn’t remember doing it. He tried to sleep as much as he could. The longer the slept, the quicker Gray’s next visit would come, and fortunately, it was getting easier to make himself sleep as time went on.

* * *

“It was too fast, Billy,” Georgie whispered, his voice loud in the silence of the room. Bill squeezed his eyes shut against the apparition. He could hear Georgie, but he didn’t have to see him. “I couldn’t catch up with it."

“We- we call boats she, Georgie,” he said quietly, unable to help himself. Gerogie’s boots squelched as he approached, full of water from the rain. It had been a very rainy, cold day when he had gone missing. Bill would never forget the sound of that particular rainfall, how it had pounded upon his bedroom ceiling, sounding like thousands upon thousands of drums. But only when he was alone. When Georgie had been in his room, or his mother, or his father, that sound had receded to the background, a gentle and welcome thrumming.

Sometimes he heard rainfall in the basement. They must have been approaching the end of winter.

“I want to go home,” said Georgie, and Bill wasn’t surprised to find tears slipping down his cheeks, involuntarily shed. He often cried when Georgie showed up.

He rubbed his face into a shoulder, tried to stop himself. Crying at a hallucination was crazy. But then, so was having a hallucination in the first place.

* * *

Gray eventually moved him to the floor. Being suspended for so long had left his arms stiff and unresponsive. It took Gray manually moving his fingers for him to recover some mobility. The earlier position Gray had put him in had staved off the worst of the damage, but he would still have to work feeling back into his arms over the next week or so (though it probably wouldn’t be a week, since Bill had no means of telling the passage of time).

While his arms were numb, his shoulders were in agony. Something had to have been torn in them. He ended up asking Gray, very tentatively, if he could have some tramadol. Gray agreed, but made him work for it, of course. After having Bill ride him, he slipped two pills past Bill’s lips, gave him a kiss, and chained him to the corner of the room. Bill curled up into a tight little ball there and promptly fell asleep. Sex always took a lot out of him these days. He’d lost so much muscle since being dragged into the basement that it was a miracle he had any left on his bones at all. Maybe that was all he would be one day; just sagging flesh and bones.

He slept easier now that he was permitted to lie down. The ground was cold, hard, and rough, but it was a damn sight better than being made to stand. It brought relief to his legs and arms, both of which had suffered while he was attached to the hook. He’d often alternated between where he put pressure to give his muscles time to recover, though he hadn’t been able to prevent the strain on his arms while sleeping. That had lead to a lot of mornings where he had awoken with a pain in his limbs that rivalled that of the box cutter. But that misery was over now. He’d earned the floor. Gray wouldn’t take it away unless he acted out, and he had no desire to rush into doing that after this ordeal.

It was easier to ignore the hallucinations now that he could cover his face and ears. They tended to go away if he scrunched up into a tiny, impenetrable ball, which he liked to do anyway to conserve body heat. On the odd occasion, there were tactile hallucinations, but those were far and few between, and he wasn’t yet convinced he wasn’t imagining them out of a desire for physical contact. He kind of missed the way Gray used to hold him, as ridiculous as that was.

* * *

Bill considered the possibility that he was dying. He ate sparsely, drank a few times a week, slept on cold, hard cement, and only interacted with one person every other day. These seemed like the sort of conditions that would eventually lead to one’s death. This realisation frightened Bill, but it was also oddly comforting, because it would deprive him of the decision to kill himself should things get too bad. He would struggle to voluntarily take his own life, but simply expiring in one sleep was easy. Quick and easy and painless. 

He didn’t want to die, surprisingly; he was stubborn like that, but he had wondered if being dead was better than what he was going through now. One tended to think morbid things while sitting in a basement full of the dead bodies of children you had once gone to school with. It was only natural. Frightening, but perfectly natural. If he ever got the opportunity to read up about Prisoner's of War, he was sure this would be documented behaviour among them.

He tried not to look at himself when there was light in the room. He was painfully skinny. His legs had lost their previous definition and his arms were embarrassingly thin. His body had once been the envy of the other Losers (once he had started cooking his own meals, that was), but not anymore. He could have played an act in the circus. The world's thinnest man! Soon enough he would be able to see every single rib in his chest.

To Gray’s credit, when he saw how thin Bill had become, he started feeding him larger, more substantial meals. No longer did he simply feed Bill crackers and bread and confectioneries; now he provided him with proper meals of meat and salad. The meals, he claimed, were made by himself. He assured Bill the meat wasn’t from a child, but Bill was hesitant to eat it all the same. He eventually did simply because Gray threatened to reattach him to the hook if he refused.

“It’s chicken,” Gray explained while pressing a portion of it past Bill’s lips. Bill barely took the time to chew before swallowing, desperate as he was to get something in his gullet. It was going to take a lot more meals before he regained any of his earlier physique. “You like it, huh Billy? I made it especially for you. You’ve been good. You deserve good food.”

Frankly, Gray could have fed him raw mince meat and he still would have enjoyed it. His body craved carbohydrates so badly that anything Gray fed him was the best thing he’d ever tasted. Beyond his starved body’s cravings for sustenance, Gray did seem to have a decent handle on spices and sauces (whether this opinion would prevail once he was eating consistently remained to be seen).  

“Gray,” he said quietly, his voice scratchy from lack of use.

Gray regarded him curiously.

“Can I g-go back uh-uh-upstairs?”

Gray pressed a forkful of chicken past his lips. Bill obediently chewed and swallowed.

“Of course not,” said Gray, almost sweetly. The chicken descended rather roughly down his throat, which had suddenly tightened. “You won’t be leaving this basement until Mr. Gray is sure you’re going to behave! And that, I can see, is going to take many, many more months.” He raised his hand to Bill’s hair, stroking him as though he were a pet. “You understand, don’t you, Billy?”

“I don’t-“ Bill was choking on his words. “I can’t – I’ll do anything t-to go uh-u-upstairs, please-“

“It’s too late to try making an appeal, Billy!” Gray speared another portion of chicken onto his fork. He forced it past Bill’s parted lips, covering Bill’s mouth with a hand to ensure he ate it instead of trying to speak. “You tried to run. To leave me. Never again.” His thumb stroked along Bill’s jaw. “I’ll house break you so well this time you won’t even _think_ of running.”

Bill closed his eyes. He couldn’t stand the proprietorial way Gray was looking at him.

“But you will be upstairs again, one day.”

Gray slowly removed his hand, pushing some salad into Bill this time. A bit of tomato and lettuce slid across his tongue. Bill chewed without thinking, relishing the tang of the tomato.

“You just have to be good. If you’re good, I’ll let you go back up earlier than I have planned.”

Bill nodded.

“Use your voice, Buh-B-Billy,” said Gray.

“O-okay,” said Bill quietly. He felt very small. He probably looked it too, with the malnutrition he was suffering. “I uh-u-understand Mr. Gray.”

“Good.”

Gray cradled his cheek in a hand. His palm was sweaty and warm. Bill couldn’t help but lean into his touch, desperate for that heat. It was always cold in the basement.

“Tell you what,” said Gray, considering Bill from top to bottom. “I’ll set a task for you soon. If you do it well enough, I’ll let you come upstairs for a little while! But _only_ a little while. It’ll be a… trial period.” Gray’s dark gaze settled on his face. “Don’t disappoint me, little buddy. That’s all you have to do.”

Bill found himself nodding despite having no idea what the trial could be. If it involved physical exertion, as most ‘trials’ did, he was going to have a difficult time of it. He had little strength to speak of. But surely, after so many months of captivity, Gray wouldn’t force him to do something physically strenuous. Or at least, if he did force that upon Bill, he would understand why Bill struggled.

He glanced nervously up at Gray, trying to read his expression and failing.

“What happens,” he asked, speaking hesitantly. “If I f-fail the trial?”

“Depends on how badly you fail it,” said Gray. “But I’m sure you won’t! I’m sure you won’t disappoint me. You don’t want to do that. I know you really, really do not want to disappoint Mr. Gray.”

Bill nodded vigorously. He most certainly did _not_ want to disappoint Gray. The isolation – a terrible and unique torture – had killed his desire to retaliate, at least for the time being.

“I’m glad, little buddy.” Gray released his face, drawing back. He forced more food into Bill’s mouth, the last of what was on the plate. Bill chewed and swallowed. “You just sit tight!” said Gray as he retrieved the ceramic plate from the floor, tucking it under an arm. “I’ll have the preparations done in a few days.”

The door closed behind Gray with a click, submerging Bill in the familiar black. He sighed and closed his eyes. As a small mercy, his stomach wasn’t aching and gurgling anymore. He would be able to fall asleep faster now that he didn't have that discomfort to contend with. If he slept long enough, he might be able to awaken just prior to Gray’s next visit.

He lay down in his corner and focused on falling into slumber. It didn’t take his mind long to oblige him, dragging him down into the pleasant nothingness of sleep.

* * *

The basement light flicked to life. Bill’s retina’s throbbed, as they always did when Gray introduced light to the basement, before gradually adjusting to the glare of the bulb. He blinked a few times to drive away any lingering discomfort and glanced to the top of the stairs, where he found Gray standing with a –

A body, he had a _body_.

It was small body, clearly a child's, and clearly a boy. They were lax in Gray's arms, their head lulling against Gray's chest and their arms swinging as Gray descended the steps. He saw tight blonde curls, pale skin, and a bright red jersey. Whoever this child was, Bill didn’t recognise them. They were too young for Bill to have encountered them in school. Maybe six or seven, at most eight.  

Gray brought the boy over to Bill and dropped him to the ground, hunching over them both. Bill instinctively brought the boy into his lap, holding him close, protecting him from Gray’s hungry gaze. Gray smiled at the sight.

“Just as small as Georgie, isn’t he?”

Bill swallowed hard. He twisted his fingers into the boy’s jersey, tucking him under his chin.

“He’s seven.” Gray reached into his pocket, unveiling his box cutter. “His name is James. That’s a nice name, isn’t it?”

Bill pressed his lips together, looking down at James. He was very small. Small and fragile. His lithe chest rose and fell with slow intakes of air. Had Georgie ever been this small? When Bill had been twelve, he certainly hadn’t felt it, but now that Bill was an adult… perhaps that was what true adulthood was, finally realising how small and fragile children truly were.

“Speak up, Billy,” instructed Gray. “Or I’ll be unhappy.”

“It’s a n-nice name,” he said dully. “Nice enough th-that he sh-s-shouldn’t be here.”

“You think his _name_ is going to save him?” Gray shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Oh, Billy, you silly, hopeful boy.” He gave his box cutter a wave. “He’s not going to leave this basement. But _you_ can decide just how he floats.”

Bill held the boy tighter, so tight that he felt the boy’s eyelashes flutter against his arm. He didn’t loosen his grip, and nor did he look down. He kept his eyes trained on Gray and his box cutter.

“I w-won’t help you.”

“No?” Gray pouted his lips, leaning down to watch James stir. Bill drew James even further into the corner. “You won’t like what happens if you don’t take action, Billy!" said Gray. "Not at _all_.”

James looked blearily up at them. He had green eyes. It came as something of a relief that he didn’t have bright, ocean blues like Georgie. “Puh… mmm… Pennywise,” he said quietly, dazedly. He rubbed at his brow with a palm, then glanced up, beyond Gray’s face. His eyes became so wide and so frightened that Bill felt compelled to cover them with a hand.

“Shh,” he soothed the boy, who had begun to sob in horror and fear. “Shh, just- don’t look. Stay still.”

“Th- the b-buh-buh-dies-” James babbled, almost incoherent in his distress.

“I know, I know, it- it’s okay, everything’s g-going to be o-okay.”

Gray made a tsking sound. “It’s not polite to _lie_ , little buddy.” He moved closer, prompting Bill and James to retreat even further into their dark, dank corner. They wouldn’t be able to get away from him. Bill knew that, yet he moved anyway. “He is going to die," Gray said.The boy made a wailing sound at that announcement. Bill awkwardly adjusted his arms so he covered both James’ eyes and ears. James shook violently in his grip.

“Kill me,” said Bill, and it was the easiest thing in the world to give his life up for this child. “Please, l-let me d-die instead. I’ll fl-f-float. I’ll do a-anything you wh-w-want.”

“Billy, if I wanted you dead, you would _be_ dead.” Gray extended the handle of the box cutter toward Bill. “You are going to kill him.”

“N-no, no, I can’t, I-“

“Either you kill him, or I kill him, and I will make sure he dies slowly.” Gray hissed the final word, reaching to grab Bill by a wrist. He yanked one of Bill’s hands away from the boy and forced the box cutter into his palm, his nails digging into Bill’s knuckles as he forced Bill to wield it. “If I have to kill him, I’ll make sure it lasts _days_. He’ll scream and scream, and you will _listen_.”

Bill’s lips trembled. The boy turned his face into Bill’s chest, his tears soaking into Bill's skin. “Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t – please don’t let the clown hurt me! Please! Please!”

Bill stared at the box cutter. He stared at it a long time. And then he thrust his hand forward, attempting to pierce Gray’s neck – and failed. Gray easily plucked the cutter out of his hand and stood, sighing. Bill was too weak to fight him.

“Option B it is, then!” He reached down to grab the child and Bill twisted around James, holding James tight to his chest and hiding the both of them in the corner. Maybe if he huddled there and closed his eyes, everything would be okay. He’d often thoughts this as a child and most of the time it had worked.

It didn’t on this occasion.

Gray wrenched James from his arms and both of them screamed. Bill lunged at Gray, dragging his nails into Gray’s legs, attempting to bring him to the floor, and his efforts were rewarded with a hard kick across his jaw. Bill went slamming into the wall. His head spun and blood bloomed at the back of his skull. He was still disorientated when he went for Gray again, which led him to dropping like a sack to the floor and smacking his chin into the cement.

Gray laughed at him. James wriggled like a viper in his strong arms. He was screaming for help, but his voice was so shrill that it wasn't making much sense.

“I gave you a choice, Billy,” said Gray. “You decided this. You remember that while I’m peeling this boys’ skin from his muscle.”

Bill’s mouth worked uselessly around a series of soft, horrified sounds. Flaying – Gray was going to flay the boy, and it was his fault, because he could not do what needed to be done, because he was a coward, because he didn’t want to be implicated, because he was scared-

“Please,” Bill begged, reaching once again for Gray’s legs. Not with nails this time. He instead wrapped his thin, shaking fingers around it, pressing his head to Gray’s shins. “Please. P-please. Please.”

“What good do you think that’s going to do you?” Gray snorted at his display. “I’ve heard begging before, Billy, and from prettier mouths.”

“Then I-I’ll… I’ll…” He tried to reach for Gray’s belt, to unbuckle it, distract him from his task, but Gray stopped him by kicking him back to the ground.

“You know what your choices are, Billy. Either you make it, or I make it for you.”

Bill looked up at James. Just how much pain would he be able to take before bottoming out? He couldn’t imagine it was much. He would spend his last moments of life in agony.

Bill closed his eyes and took several deep, unsteady breaths. He couldn’t let that happen. It would be monstrous to let Gray go ahead with his plan.

“I’ll d-do it.”

Gray grinned down at him, letting James drop to the floor at Bill’s feet. He followed the boy down, kneeling before Bill and reaching for him. Bill didn’t resist as Gray coiled an arm around his neck and heaved him upright, forcing him to sit with James on his thighs. He pressed the box cutter into Bill’s hand once more, curling his hand around Bill’s fingers. Holding, but not restraining. His other hand steadied James for him.

“Can I,” he started, his voice breaking. “Give him s-something to make this easier?”

“Such as?”

“Tramadol.” He wrapped his free arm around James’ shoulders, holding him. James didn’t try to free himself. He trusted Bill. In his childish naivety, he thought Bill was going to save him.

“No.” Gray’s cheek leaned into the back of his head. “He doesn’t need it. Do this properly and he’ll pass out nice and fast.”

Bill tightened his grip on the box cutter. If he was to kill the boy fast and painlessly, he had to slit James' carotid artery. He would bleed out in minutes, perhaps even seconds. Very terrifying seconds, but still faster than what Gray intended for him. Done right, he might even fall into instantaneous unconsciousness.

Bill’s hand shook. The blade gleamed under the overhead light.

“Hurry it up, Billy,” Gray murmured against the nape of his neck. “Before I decide to do this for you.”

Bill wetted his lips. He gently guided James into looking up at him, wiping away the tears on his chubby pink cheeks with his fingers. “I’m g-going to do something th-t-that will hurt for a little wh-while," said Bill. "But everything w-will be okay, after. Ok-okay?”

James looked up at him, uncomprehending. Little boys did not understand mortality.

Bill forced himself not to cry. His tears would only serve to make James more distressed. “It’s going to b-be okay,” he promised.

James nodded slowly, sniffing and shaking. His throat was likely too sore to resume screaming. Bill knew first hand how hard it could be to produce sound after a few minutes of non-stop bellowing. He had shouted quite often during his first few days in the basement, if only so he could hear _something_.

He guided James into lying his head on his thighs. He closed James' eyes for him. Gray snickered from behind him, but otherwise remained silent, watching Bill work. With cool, shaking fingers, he felt around James neck for the appropriate artery, then positioned the box cutter. Gray’s hand was still wound tight around his own.

Even though he had determined exactly what he had to do and how to do it, it was hard to force himself to enact his plan. His hand twitched in Gray’s. He wanted to withdraw, to run away from this horror. He wanted that so badly, but he forced himself to remain still. He stared at the vein throbbing in James’ neck and gave one long, pathetic sniff. This was almost too much to bear.

Please, he pleaded with himself. Just do it. Do it, or he’ll be in so much pain. Do it. Do it.

“Hurry up, little buddy,” said Gray, sounding dreadfully impatient.

Bill bit his bottom lip. On the count of three, he decided.

One.

Two.

He slid the blade home, as deep as it would go, and it was like sliding into butter. The boy’s neck was so soft and weak. Blood sprayed and spattered hot and slippery on Bill’s face, creating rivulets on his neck and chest.

James looked up at him, his eyes wide, horrified. And then, after a few seconds of jerking and choking and spasming in Bill’s arms, the light faded from them. He fell still. His little body slumped against Bill’s thighs, and if not for the blood, one might have thought he was sleeping.

Bill dropped the box cutter. He opened his mouth and screamed one long, broken sound that he was only distantly aware he was making. He screamed until his throat was raw, and then slowly that sound developed into a soft, whimpering kind of noise, the kind one might hear from an injured animal that had crawled beneath a porch to die.

Gray stroked his hair and kissed the back of his neck, smiling against his skin. “You did such a good job,” he said. “I think I’ll let you upstairs tomorrow.”

All the desire Bill’d had to escape the basement had abandoned him. He wanted to be in the dark again. The cold, empty dark where he could curl up and pretend he didn’t exist.

Richie had once likened him to a knight in a movie. Bill was strong and good, he’d said, just like a knight from one of those corny adventure stories. He’d been drunk at the time, but Bill had been able to tell he meant it. He’d thought Bill had a strength and goodness that could never be smothered.

Blood dripped from Bill's chin, landing on his thighs. It had cooled fast under the frigid air. It wouldn’t be long before it started to turn glutinous.

He did not feel like a knight right now. He didn’t feel good, either. Assuming there had ever been any good in him at all, because how good could one be if they could convince themselves to kill a little boy? He was no knight. He was not the man Richie had thought he was. He never had been.

* * *

Gray brought him upstairs and into the bedroom. He lay Bill down, slid in under the covers next to him, and pulled Bill to his chest. The blood – James’ blood – was still slick on Bill’s face, soaking into the white of the pillow. The scent of it clogged his nostrils. He wanted a bath, but he didn’t dare ask for one, and he was having trouble finding his voice anyway.

Gray fell asleep within minutes. Bill didn’t. He lay listening to Gray soft, even breaths, his mind blank save for a distant, squirming horror that he didn’t dare try to confront at head on. He made a conscious effort not to think. If he let himself think, the guilt would eat him whole.

The blankets were quick to warm his chilled skin. It had been a long time since he’d felt any kind of warmth that wasn’t a product of Gray’s ‘affections’ and it eased his anxiety some. He shifted his leg, forcing his ankle and the shackle encircling it as far away from the rest of him as possible, trying to pretend, just for a little while, that the chain was not there. He was not chained to the bed. He was at his parents home, in his own bed, and there was no basement and no James. No James. It was just him in his childhood bed, safe and warm.

A faint creaking from downstairs startled him from his reverie. Bill rose onto his elbows. Slowly, so he would not awaken Gray, who would undoubtedly be unhappy if Bill startled him out of his slumber. The creaking got louder and he wondered if perhaps a cat was trying to get inside until the creaking was joined by some faint murmuring.

In all likelihood, it was some teenagers trying to break in. High schoolers often dared their friends to enter the Neibolt house.

Bill’s heart thudded in his chest. If he yelled for help, he would undoubtedly be heard by the intruders. But he would awaken Gray as a consequence, who would race after the new quarry the moment he was lucid enough to do so. Yelling would be putting them in dangers way for his own benefit. In all likelihood, they would try the door, find it locked, and leave.

Bill listened to them jiggle the handle. He didn’t have long to decide what to do. If he didn’t shout for help, there might not come another opportunity like this. On the other hand, if the visitors decided Bill’s shouting had been a prank, an attempt to embarrass them, perhaps even the supernatural, then the only result would be a mad Robert Gray, and a mad Robert Gray… well, Bill had enough experience to know he didn’t want to face that again.

He gnawed on the corner of his bottom lip as he listened. The intruders weren’t giving up. Their attempts to break down the door were loud, violent, and Bill suspected, even without his shouting, Gray would soon stir.

Breathing hard and panicked, Bill silently dragged the chain off the floor and toward him, gathering as much of it into his arms as he could. Gray had left it long enough for him to go to the toilet if need be. A rare thing for him to do, but he trusted Billy to behave after what had happened in the basement. He slid the chain beneath Gray’s neck, grasped either side, and prepared to pull. He had no delusions about being strong enough to successfully choke Gray. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to subdue him until the interlopers had fled.

The sounds were even louder now. There as a thump so loud that Gray’s eyes flew open. It didn’t take him more than a second to register the chain, but that second was long enough for Bill to pull on either end and crush his windpipe.

“Run,” he bellowed, his voice as loud as he could make it. Scratchy, but certainly booming. “Run! You h-have to run! There’s a muh-m-murderer in here!”

Gray bared his teeth at him. His hands shot up, one covering Bill's mouth, the other wrenching his arm away hard enough that it was almost jerked out of its socket. Bill cried out, the sound muffled by Gray’s palm. His fingers began to slacken on the chain. Gray took immediate advantage, reversing their positions, throwing Bill down onto the mattress and clambering on top of him. Bill snapped his eyes shut just before a fist slammed into his jaw, and then his temple, and then his chest, driving the breath out of him. Muscles creaked. Bone snapped. The chain fell completely from his fingers.

“I’ll deal with you later,” Gray hissed, slipping off the bed and hurrying out the hall while Bill curled up tight in bed, nursing his fresh injuries. His nose was gushing and Gray had undoubtedly broken a rib. He could feel it shifting inside of his chest when he inhaled, producing a pain that sent white sparking before his eyes.

The thudding from downstairs continued. The idiots were still trying to get inside. He cursed softly under his breath. “Run,” he tried to shout, but his voice died in his throat, the agony in his chest reducing his words to a whisper. He clawed his fingers into his skin and tried again. “Run!” Louder this time, but not by much. He doubted whoever was out there had been able to hear it.

They must have finally breached the door, as the next thing Bill heard were shouts, screams, and scattering. Footsteps thudded all over the house. He knew which ones belonged to Gray by the heavy quality of them. Even without shoes, the man _thundered_ his way through each room.

Bill crawled over the side of the bed, heaving himself across the floor in hopes of being able to turn around anyone that ascended the steps. They needed to get out of here, or they would die, just like James had. Gray would make him kill them, too. He was sure of it.

His progress was slow. Every movement, even the slightest of them, hurt so badly that it was almost paralysing. He pulled on one of his boxers half-way through the journey, working the zipper up to his hip as he crawled the rest of the way into the hall. He gave a sob of relief when finally he was close enough to the door to poke his head out into the hall.

A familiar Hawaiian shirt slipped into view.

“Richie?” he croaked out.

Richie’s face paled at the sight of him. He was carrying a bat. He seemed to forget it as he closed in on Bill, dropping to his knees before him.

“Oh shit.” His voice tremored violently. “Oh shit, you’re really here. Fuck. Oh Jesus, what’d he do to you? You look… fuck, Bill.”

Richie dragged him into his arms, the familiarity of them made Bill shake. “Richie.” He dipped his head into the boy’s neck. He smelt of Mr. Tozier's cologne, which he regularly stole.

He was real. This was the real Richie. He wasn’t a hallucination. He was just as warm and muscular as Bill remembered and his cheek was wet on Bill’s hair, which wasn’t a first for Richie. They had often cried in each others arms as kids.

A shout from downstairs startled them out of their reverie. Richie reluctantly extracted Bill from his chest, his eyes falling to the chain attached to Bill’s ankle. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“We have to get to the others. They came here too.” He attempted to yank Bill free of the chain, but to no avail. Richie cursed and punched the chain, which prompted him to curse again, even louder than before. “That fucking _hurt_. How the _fuck_ do I get this off, Bill? Where-?”

“Downstairs,” said Bill, wobbling to his feet. He leaned against Richie for support. “If- if you can find it, undo it and find the others. If not- they need you more than I do.”

Richie looked torn, his wide, worried eyes flicking between Bill and the stairs. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Yeah.” Bill offered him a weak little smile. “Go, Richie.”

Richie, after a significant amount of hesitation, gently deposited Bill against the stair banister and ran back down the stairs, bringing his bat with him. Bill curled an arm over his chest, his forearm flat over his broken rib, keeping it still. He breathed a little easier in this position.

There was shouting throughout the house. So much that Bill couldn’t follow what was being said. He recognised the voices – Beverly and Eddie and Mike – and all of them were shrill and loud, panicked. He did not hear Gray. Wherever he was, he was out of earshot.

He felt an insistent tugging at his ankle shackle, then all pressure suddenly subsided. He tentatively started drawing the chain toward him. When the end slipped out of the bedroom, slithering around the door frame, Bill’s mouth broke into a grin. Despite the pain in his chest, he forced himself to his feet, grasping the banister for leverage. Richie met him half way down the stairs.

“They’re in the basement,” said Richie in a slurry of words. He pressed the bat into Bill’s hands, slid an arm beneath Bill’s legs, and heaved him off the floor. Bill yelped, both from pain and surprise. Richie cast him an apologetic look.

“Where are you hurt?” Richie asked.

“Think I hu-h-have a broken rib,” said Bill shakily, leaning into Richie’s chest. “But more importantly, how’d he g-get everyone in the ba-b-basement?”

“He pushed Eddie down there,” said Richie miserably. “We gotta go help them. That Gray guy – he has a fucking knife the size of my foot!”

Bill clutched at Richie’s broad shoulder and he ran down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. The voices from within the basement became clearer as they neared the entrance.

“-Run, Eddie, get outta the way!”

Mike.

“I’m trying! Fuck, oh god!”

Eddie.

“He can’t get all of us! We have to spread out!”

Beverly.

“Listen to Beverly!”

Ben.

There were no other voices. No other. Bill’s heart dropped in his chest.

“Where’s Stan? Where is he? I can’t- I can’t hear him, Richie!” he said, panic turning his words into a desperate wheeze. Richie gripped him tighter.

“Calm down,” said Richie. “It’s okay, Bill. He went to drag the police over here.”

“Wh- Stan? Why?”  Bill’s throat bobbed as they stepped through the basement door. “Why not Eddie? He’s- he’s so much smaller, and…”

“Eddie insisted on coming in with us,” said Richie. “He’d do anything for you, Bill, don’t you know that?”

Bill closed his eyes, fighting back the urge to cry. Not now. This wasn’t the time to get emotional.

There came a series of gasps as he and Richie reached the landing. Bill knew he didn’t look good. He was skinny, malnourished, and injured; he must have been quite a sight to behold, no longer the ‘Big Bill’ he and his friends had known. That knowledge hurt. It hurt to know how far he had fallen, but Gray was standing before his friends, wielding one of his knives and snarling like a beast, and there were more important things to focus on right now.

Bill forced Richie to release him. He staggered to his feet, wobbled precariously, and then stood upright. The pain in his chest was screaming. But he fought through it, because his friends needed his support.

“There's no point in fighting, G-Gray,” he said, his mouth twisting into a snarl of his own. “The p-police are coming. It’s o-over for you.”

“Over for me?” Gray gnashed his teeth, swinging forward with his knife, startling Mike and Eddie into retreating. “It’s over for you, Billy. What do you think they’re gonna do when they find out you killed that boy? Do you think they’ll let us share a cell?”

Bill inhaled through a tight throat. Gray had strung up James’ body. He forced himself not to look at it. “I d-don’t care, as long as you’re i-in there t-t-too.”

Richie cast him a worried look, uncomprehending, and took a step closer to Gray, moving toward Beverly and Ben in a protective stalk. He looked ready to pounce, should he need to. Bill handed him his bat.

Gray’s eyes flicked over each Loser. Six against one. Those odds were pretty good, though Bill didn’t know how useful he would be in his current condition.

“You think you’ve won.” Gray sneered, looking all the more like a monster. “Well come, then. Come! I’ll gut at least two of you before the police arrive. Your friends are going to die, Billy, and it’s your-“

There was a scream. A great, angry scream followed by an echoing thwack, and then Gray was stumbling back, a hand clutched to his jaw, which now sported a bloody gash.

Eddie stood panting with a pole in hand. A pole now splattered in Gray’s blood.

“Don’t talk to Bill like that,” he shouted, his voice wavering but strong. The voice of a man, not the sickly, hypochondriac kid most thought of him as. “Don’t you talk to him like that, you- you ugly ginger fuck!”

“ _Wow_ ,” murmured Mike.

Beverly was next to advance, her hand twisted tight around a pole of her own. Ben was quick to follow, and then Richie and Mike, all of them crowding around Gray, pushing him toward a well situated in the middle of the room. Bill remained back, watching, his gaze steady on Gray’s face. Gray looked back at him, his face full of killing spite, but he knew- he _must_ have known that he had lost, because he didn’t speak again.

Richie lunged. “Welcome to the Losers Club, asshole!” he shouted, smacking Gray hard across the shoulder.

Gray grunted as he was struck and attempted to lash out, flinging his knife at Ben. Mike, acting with the speed and ferocity expected of a football player, sent a rock slamming into Gray’s forearm before Ben could be impaled. Beverly took advantage of his momentary disorientation, swinging her pole in a wide arc and hitting Gray hard across the skull. A loud, echoing – _cuh-raaack_! – sounded and Gray yowled in anger and pain, his free hand flying to his skull, to the blood blooming there. He didn’t get time to recover, however, as Eddie went tearing into the fight again and kicked him hard in the shin, sending him stumbling back, his thighs hitting the wall of the well.

The fight continued in a flurry of movement, and it was clear Gray was losing. He couldn’t combat five attackers, particularly ones in their late teens. Mike struck him across the chest; Eddie kicked him in the legs; Richie smacked him upside the head; Ben threw him bodily against the well, and Beverly – strong, beautiful Beverly – hit him so hard over the forearm that the knife slipped from his fingers.

The force behind that final strike sent Gray’s arms cartwheeling, cartwheeling, and then he was falling back, into the well. Richie tried to lunge for him, to pull him back, but he wasn’t strong enough; Gray slipped from his fingers. He plummeted. They could hear his body striking stone as he dropped. After a few seconds, he had descended too deep for any of them to hear his progress.

Silence fell. A long, pregnant silence.

Bill was the first to move. He lowered himself to the bottom step on the stairs, feeling exhausted despite his lack of participation in the fight. He leaned his head into the cement. Eddie joined him a moment later, coiling his arms around Bill, protective and warm. Richie was next, pulling Bill beneath his chin. Ben wrapped his arms around all three of them, and Beverly squeezed into the group to hold Bill’s hand. Mike found a spot at his side, his mouth bumping Bill’s cheek, soft and warm.

“You’re going home, Bill,” Mike said quietly. “It’s okay now.”

Despite all he had been through, Mike’s voice was full of strength and conviction, and Bill believed him.

* * *

The hospital had Bill on a drip almost the moment he was through the doors. Though Bill didn’t feel that he needed immediate medical attention, the nurses rushed him into emergency anyway, got him a bed, and had him evaluated by two doctors. They said a great many things to each other, with liberal use of medical jargon, and Bill lay there and simply enjoyed the morphine they had introduced to his system. By the way they were speaking, Bill gathered that he was in much worse shape than he had thought, but he was too relaxed to care.

His friends sat at his bedside. They had no intention of leaving him until visiting hours were over, and that wouldn’t be for some time yet. They would need to talk to the police soon, anyway, and he expected they would want to take a statement about Mr. Gray from every single one of them. Bill wasn’t looking forward to doing that. They would want every dirty little detail, he was sure.

He dozed in and out of consciousness for a while before sleep finally took him. He couldn’t have slept long as he awoke to the sight of Beverly and Eddie talking to two police officers behind a nearby curtain, clearly recognisable by their shadows.

Richie was seated next to his bed. He snaked his hand past the barrier and grasped at Bill’s hand once he saw Bill was awake. “Hey,” he said softly, smiling. “We convinced the police not to bother you for a few days. They’re giving you up to two weeks to recover. Just go in when you feel up to it.”

“Thanks,” said Bill. He swiped a hand across his face, finding his arm as heavy as a brick. He couldn’t feel his broken rib anymore. “Are- are my p-parents here?” He didn’t see them. Perhaps there was a limit to how many visitors one could have at a time. He already had six visitors – or seven, rather, as he saw Stanley was among the other Losers, talking in a conspiratorial whisper to Ben. Seven visitors was probably pushing it.

“Oh, uh…” Richie hesitated. He glanced over his shoulder at Mike, who was standing near Bill's bedside table, nervously scratching at the nape of his neck.

“Your folks moved out,” explained Mike, with clear reluctance. “They thought you were dead and they couldn’t stand to stay in Derry any longer. They moved out of Maine a few months ago.”

Bill couldn’t say he was terribly surprised. The news didn’t hurt as much as it should have.

“It’s okay.” He was sure, until he managed to get back on his feet, youth services would provide him with somewhere to stay. They wouldn’t just kick a guy to the gutter who had been the captive of a psychopath for-

How long, exactly, had he been Gray’s captive?

He glanced around the room, searching for some sign of the date.

“Er.” Richie clapped a hand over his shoulder. “Do you need to go to the toilet? I can, you know… carry you if you do.”

Bill snorted. “No, Richie. I’m tuh-t-trying to f-figure out what the time is.”

“Oh, it’s like… eleven thirty or something,” said Mike.

Bill shook his head. “I mean the d-day and month.”

“It’s March, Bill,” said Richie.

Bill ran a hand up through his hair. March. Much later than he had been expecting.

“How long was I…?”

“Six months,” said Richie, and Bill grimaced. Half a year. He’d lost half a year to Gray. He'd even missed his birthday. No wonder his parents had thought him dead.

“Are you okay?” asked Mike, before running a hand down his face and sighing. “I mean, obviously you aren’t, but that’s rough news. Once your folks get a call from the police, I’m sure they’ll want to take you home.”

“I don’t care,” said Bill simply. He did. Deeply, in fact, but he felt betrayed in some odd way and he didn’t want to give his parents his grief. “They’ve barely been p-parents to me these last few yuh-years anyway. I’ll… I’ll j-just…” He shrugged helplessly. “The gov-go-…government will give me board s-somewhere. I’m only eighteen.”

“Fuck the government,” announced Richie. “Come stay with me! We’ve got an extra room. Right now we’re just using it for storage and shit.”

“Richie.” He shook his head. “I c-can’t ask your f-folks to do that for me. It’s t-too much.”

“Come off it, Bill. They _love_ you. They won’t mind.” Richie flapped a hand. “Even if they did, I’d just give you my room. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor. I've got one of those heavy-duty sleeping bags that cost like fifty bucks in Walmart.”

“My uncle has plenty of room too, if you want it,” piqued up Mike, offering him a gentle smile. “Hell, alternate between all the Losers. We’d all love to have you, man.”

Bill laughed hoarsely. A twinge of pain in his chest prompted him to stop. “Th-thanks, Mike. And you too, Richie.”

“I’ll give them a call right now,” Richie announced, turning on his heel in a rather dramatic fashion. “Mike, you take watch!”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Aye-aye, craptain.”

Richie grinned over his shoulder at him. “Good one.” And then he slid towards the entrance, where Bill recalled the pay phones to be lined up against a wall.

Mike took Richie’s chair, folding his arms over the bed barrier. “Man,” said Mike, tsking. “You have a _ton_ of school work to catch up on, Bill.”

“G-god…” Bill dropped his head back, his eyes fluttering shut. “You s-should have left me in t-that basement.”

Mike chuckled. “You’ll survive, don’t worry. I think the teachers will let you off considering you were living with a psychopath for six months.”

“I don’t know. Mr. Keller’s a fucknut.”

“Language, Bill.” Mike fake-swatted his shoulder. “He’s an _asshole_.”

“Jerk.”

“Fart knocker.”

“Cockwobble.”

“Fop-doddle.”

“Fuckmook.”

Mike burst out laughing. Bill followed shortly after, though it came out in short puffs due to his injury. “What the fuck’s a _fuckmook_? Do people _use_ that?” asked Mike.

“I w-w-wouldn’t use it if th-they didn’t!” said Bill, grinning. “Y-you’ve never heard it b-before?”

“Nope.” Mike threw up his hands. “But I’m sure gonna use it now. It’s insulting and confusing. A double whammy.”

“Make sure to mention where you got it from,” said Bill.

“Course I will, Bill. I would never dream of not giving you due credit.”

Bill made a small bowing motion, then rolled onto his side, pulling his legs toward his chest. It might have been the morphine, or it might have been his friends, but either way, he was in oddly high spirits for someone who had only recently escaped the tyranny and abuse of a homicidal maniac. The reality would come flooding back sooner or later, but for now, Mike was grinning at him and Richie was striding back toward his bed, nodding in enthusiastic assent, and all his troubles didn’t seem so troubling anymore.

“Good news!” Richie crowed once within earshot. “My parents are happy to have you! They’re setting up the bedroom as we speak! Or well… mom is. Dad needs to sleep so he’s not exhausted for work in the morning.”

“You come stay at the farm some time, though,” said Mike, moving aside so Richie could recover his chair. He continued to lean on the barrier. “You can help shear some sheep. It’s relaxing.”

“And the smell of sheep shit will make you forget all about your troubles,” added Richie.

“I don’t have a-any troubles,” mumbled Bill dazedly, smiling in a manner he knew was probably goofy. “Not right now, anyway.”

“The power of friendship,” said Richie wryly. He resumed holding Bill’s hand, his fingers loose over Bill’s knuckles. “It’s a hell of a drug. And morphine is too, obviously.”

Bill shrugged. “You’re not w-wrong. I feel pretty good.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Richie. “That’s how I want you to feel for the rest of your life, Bill.”

“Yeah?” Bill arched an eyebrow at him. “You g-gonna stick around until I’m o-old and gray to make sure of that?”

Richie considered him for a long moment. His brow pinched. “You know what?” he said, leaning in close, letting his voice drop to a murmur. “I think I am.”

* * *

The Tozier household had the sort of atmosphere one would expect of a house lived in by Richie Tozier. With how welcoming the Tozier’s were, jubilant and genial in a way that allowed for no tense moments, Bill found it easy to settle into his new home. Within a single day, he truly felt as though he was part of the family. It helped that the Tozier’s had known Bill since he was a toddler and had often treated him like a son even _before_ he’d moved in with them.

The days were reasonably easy. The nights, Bill found a lot harder. It was the dark Bill found hardest to deal with. The cold, empty dark that stretched on endlessly throughout the night. The dark reminded him of the basement, and sometimes, if he awoke in it, he convinced himself that all of this had been a dream. The Losers hadn’t found him. He was still at Neibolt, still chained to the floor in a dark corner, malnourished and weak and helpless. He would never escape. Gray had said he never would, so it had to be true.

But Richie was always there, during these moments. As he slept in the room across the hall, he could hear Bill whimpering and moving about, and he got practised over the following weeks in calming Bill down from his delusions.

He would bury his face into Bill’s hair and whisper to him. “It’s okay, Bill. You’re safe. You don’t have to worry anymore. Everything’s okay now.”

On the worst nights, the nights where Bill couldn’t shake the feeling of being trapped and alone, Richie would guide him into his own bed, and he would sleep tucked under Richie’s chin, with his ear against Richie’s chest. Richie’s heartbeat soothed his nerves. Gray had never let him sleep like this. Gray had always wanted his chest to Bill’s back, almost impersonal despite the proximity of their bodies. Richie insisted on them being face to face.

It was slow going, but things did get easier.

When it came time for Bill to make a statement to the police, Richie was there with him, holding his hand through the whole ordeal. He recounted every experience in painful detail. Sometimes Richie’s hand shook, or clenched, but never did it release Bill's. He did not, as Bill had expected, find Bill repellent, not even after it was unveiled that he was raped. He held tight onto Bill like he was precious and perfect, like he wanted nothing bad in the world to ever touch him again.

With the statement over, and Bill acquitted of any fault in James' death, Bill was left to focus on recovery. The first problem he acknowledged were his insecurities. It was only natural that he had some. He struggled with self-depreciating thoughts. He found it difficult to find anything to like about himself. He admitted this to Richie at one point and Richie arranged a therapist through his parents.

“You should be seeing one anyway,” he told Bill, scowling. “You went through a lot of shit.”

Bill didn’t particularly want to see a therapist, but Richie was right; he might benefit from one. It was worth trying, even if it turned out not to be for him. To be able to speak of his experiences to someone who wasn’t law enforcement would help.

That wasn’t all Richie did, though. Richie more exciting ways to prove to Bill that he was still worthy of love, no matter what Gray had done to him. This included sticking cue cards with compliments to his bedroom door:

‘You seriously have the cutest laugh I’ve ever heard. I’m fucking envious, Denbrough’.

‘I would let you crush me with your thighs, you cute asshole.’

‘I want to hold your hand all the time, and that’s so gay.’

‘I would give you the last slice of pizza’.

(Bill always smiled when he read them.)

And announcing over the school PA system that ‘Bill Denbrough is the fucking nicest and hottiest guy in the school and I'll fight anyone who disagrees’ before being wrestled out of the room by school staff.

Later, once he was sure Bill consented to the contact, he started giving Bill affection at every available opportunity. The _good_ kind of affection, not the kind Gray had given him. Hugs and kisses and hand holding and the like. He did a good job of making Bill feel as though he wasn’t entirely ruined. Maybe he would never get his innocence back, and maybe he would never be the man he had once been, but Richie sure had a way of making him feel like maybe the man he was right now wasn’t so bad after all.

Bill Denbrough was still alive. A little flayed, a little broken, but still alive, and he had his friends to make sure being alive was a victory rather than a consolation prize.

* * *

“How did you guys f-find me anyway, Richie?” he asked, almost a month after being saved. He'd been so focused on recovery that he hadn't thought to pose this question earlier. 

“You sure you want to talk about this?” asked Richie.

“Yeah.”

Richie hesitated for a long time before answering. “Mike thought he saw you get thrown into a car," he said, speaking slowly, haltingly. "Thought being the operative word. He told us and we decided to scope out Neibolt house, since it was around that area."

Richie looked uncomfortably away. 

"But we didn’t find anything. He just went in every so often and then left. There were no weird sounds from inside, and we shouted through the door, but no one called back. We looked in through a window, and the place looked way cleaner than we remembered, so we figured he must be trying to restore it after all.

Well, they figured, I should say. I kept on checking the place out. I thought there had to be a good reason you suspected him of something. Eventually I saw him carry some little kid inside, and I knew the kid wasn’t his since they didn’t look anything like him. So I rode to everyone’s houses and we came to rescue the kid.

Didn’t expect to find you there, to be honest. I was convinced he’d killed you. Good thing I was wrong, eh?"

Bill threaded his fingers into Richie’s, smiling.

“Thanks for finding me, Richie.”

Richie returned the smile, visibly relieved.

“I never would have stopped looking, you know." He tightened his grip on Bill's hand. "Never.”

* * *

It took two weeks for the police to determine that Robert Gray was missing. Missing, not dead. It took an additional two for them to decide to broadcast this to Derry. 

Maggie and Wentworth Tozier took Bill aside to deliver the news. Bill didn’t let them know he’d overheard it that morning on the telly.

He thanked them, reassured them that he was okay, and sat in his room.

The news created in him a deep cold that pervaded every inch of his mind. He was submerged in it. Drowning, perhaps, but he sat quiet and collected on the edge of the bed and considered his hands.

The veins on them were less prominent than they had been a few weeks prior. His skin was less brittle. He was healing, slowly but surely, and the damage Gray had done would be gone within a few more months. There would be no trace left of him on Bill’s body-

But that wasn’t quite true, was it? He'd carved his initials into Bill's skin, left welts on his mind with his psychological torture, and filled him with a filth that couldn't be washed away no matter how much Bill scrubbed and scrubbed. He had caused irrevocable damage to Bill's psyche and to his body. There were some things that would never leave him no matter how desperately he wanted them to.

The malnutrition and bruises and scars would fade, or at least become difficult to discern without a thorough examination, but Gray had dug deep into Bill, and he had left his mark.

He twisted his hands in his lap. He really could have used morphine right about now.

“Bill!” Richie shouted his name from his doorway, startling him out of his reverie. His head shot up.

“Richie,” he said back, with much less energy.

Richie stared at him a moment, then entered the room, closing the door behind him. He planted his ass against it.

“So, uh…” He made a vague gesture with his hands. “That’s some news, huh?”

Bill moved his twisting hands out of his lap, spreading them over his knees. He didn’t need Richie seeing how anxious he was. “Y-yeah.”

Richie slapped his hands on his thighs. “You know I’d never let him hurt you again, right?”

“You and the other Losers,” said Bill with a hint of a smile.

“But especially me,” said Richie. “You, uh… you mean the world to me, you know that? You were a little pissant when we were kids, but I liked you for that.”

“Thanks,” said Bill wryly. “Y-you sure know how t-to compliment a guy, Richie.”

“I know. It’s a talent.” Richie laughed shrilly, clearly nervous. “But I like you now, too. I mean, just was much as I did as a kid. More, even, because, uh…” He flapped his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “I like you a lot, and I hope you know I wouldn’t if you weren’t a great, lovable guy.”

Bill arched an eyebrow at him. He shoved a hand up under his chin, watching Richie with interest. “I’m okay, Richie. Y-you don’t have to ruh-r-reassure me.”

“Sure I do,” said Richie, pushing off the door to join him on the bed, sitting with their thighs side by side. “I mean, not out of obligation or anything. I’m reassuring you because I want to. Because I want you to be happy.”

“You’re d-doing a good job,” said Bill, smiling. He was surfacing from the deep cold, just a little. Warm fingers had wrapped themselves around his, pulling him steadily out. “It’s, uh… h-hard to be unhappy with y-you around. I feel g-good when you’re here, less i-inhuman.”

Richie’s arm came up behind him, and once Bill gave a nod to indicate physical contact was permitted, he lowered it to Bill’s shoulders, guiding Bill to lying his head against Richie’s clavicle.

“You know, I um… I really…” Richie hesitated. He took a deep breath, curled his hand against Bill’s shoulder, and lowered his head so Bill could see Richie’s flushed cheeks. “I know this is a real bad time in your life and everything, and you’re probably not ready for commitment, and that’s fine and dandy, but if you ever wanted to – no, let me try again.” A long pause, followed by halting breaths. He was clearly struggling to find the right words. “I just… I want you to know I like you as, um, more than a friend, and even if you don’t like me back that way, or you never could, that’s okay. I just want you to know you’re loved.” He turned his face away, his cheeks radiating heat. “What Gray did didn’t change how I feel, because you’re still my Bill, okay? You’re still you. You’re still the guy I fell for in like, sixth grade. That’s- that’s all. That’s all I wanted to say.”

Bill turned his face into Richie’s chest, his own cheeks starting to warm. Having the person you loved admit that they loved was a rather exhilarating feeling, and now he was flying instead of drowning and burying a grin into Richie’s shirt.

“You a-asshole,” he whispered. “I w-w-was supposed t-to confess first. I p-promised myself I w-would.”

Richie barked a laugh, one full of relief. “That’s me, ruining everyone’s plans with my bravery and charm.” He planted a big, sloppy kiss on the top of Bill’s head. Bill made a gagging sound despite the fact it was perhaps the sweetest thing anyone had done to him recently. “I love you, Bill.”

Loved him. Loved _him_.

In moments like these, Bill realised Gray was nothing. A distant, painful memory and nothing more.

That was the trick, Bill decided. That was how you got through each day after a trauma like his. You let men like Gray have their moment. Just one short moment, once a day or perhaps once a week. You let yourself remember all the pain and humiliation and fear, and you let yourself find catharsis from it. And then every other moment after you delegated to those you love. You let them be your future, and men like Gray be your past. That was how you did it. That was how Bill was _going_ to do it.

“You alright?” asked Richie, a touch of concern in his voice. “You’ve gone quiet.”

“I’m just…”

Bill threaded their fingers. Richie’s palm was sweaty. He smiled.

“I’m just happy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally finished this baby! I'm thinking of doing a sequel, since there's still a lot of room to explore Bill's recovery/what exactly happened to Gray. We'll see! I hope you guys enjoyed this... rather traumatising fic, haha. Let me know what you think! Feedback is my lifeblood!!


End file.
